Inter-State Council not to hold talks with extremists

HYDERABAD: Inter-State Council has given up plans to conduct a dialogue with Left wing extremists, particularly CPI (Maoists), on giving up weapons and coming forward for a discussion.

The Inter-State Council standing committee meeting was held recen-tly under the chairmanship of Union home mi-nister Rajnath Singh in Delhi which was attended by Chief Ministers, Union ministers and other officials. 

When this issue came up for discussion, Union home secretary Rajiv Gauba informed that th-ere has been no respo-nse from these groups on eschewing violence. The home ministry had sent a copy of the discussions of the Inter-State Council’s standing committee meeting to all the states. 

The meeting discussed about the recommendations of Punchhi Com-mission on internal sec-urity issues. Regarding the Maoists issue, the Commission had noted that there is growing understanding between the Centre and the stat-es for handling this ma-jor internal security pr-oblem and the Commi-ssion felt that concerted efforts on socio-economic development in all th-ese backward and tribal areas must continue. 

The Commission had suggested that initiating a dialogue with the Maoists may be an alternative that can be considered. On this, the Un-ion home ministry said that from time to time,  the state governments had appealed to the Left wing extremists, especially the CPI (Maoists), the most violent group, to abjure violence and hold talks on any issue of concern to them. But no concrete results have emerged so far. 

The Union home ministry said that the CPI (Maoists) party believes in overthrowing the pre-sent system of Parliam-entary democracy thro-ugh ‘protracted People’s war’ and wishes to capture political power in the country.