Air power should be limited to Bastar, says Congress MP

NEW DELHI - Jharkhand’s Congress MP Mabel Rebello favours giving air support to security forces battling Maoists but says it should be “limited to Bastar region” and used only “to provide logistical support like supplying food or picking up affected people and not for firing or killing people”.

In an interview, the outspoken Rebello blamed the carelessness by law enforcement agencies and the “terrible mismatch” between the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the state police for the two massacres in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh in April and May.

“There is a terrible mismatch between the CRPF and the local police. Unless there is perfect coordination and understanding between them, and at all levels, there will be more Dantewadas,” warned the Congress leader who is familiar with the Chhattisgarh terrain, having cut her political teeth in united Madhya Pradesh. “Unfortunately, that coordination is missing.”

Seventyfive CRPF personnel and a Chhattisgarh policeman were killed when Maoists ambushed and gunned them down on a forested stretch of Dantewada April 6. And on Monday, the Maoists blew up a bus on a forested highway, killing 31 civilians and special police officers.

Both incidents, she said, betrayed the failure of the local police and the CRPF.

“In the latest incident, the SPOs were drafted to go to Sukma… You should never send 30-40 jawans by an ordinary bus. The whole world could see them waiting for the bus… They stood eating paan or having chai. The Naxalites were obviously informed immediately.

The killing of 75 CRPF personnel, Rebello said, was also due to the mistake of a CRPF officer who had just got posted there and sent the paramilitary troopers out in the field, “without planning a specific operation”.

They went to a village called Chintalnar, “which is to be the capital of the state of Dandakaranaya of Maoists and is a liberated area”. This made them sitting ducks. The officer, she lamented, had still “not been shifted out”.

The role of the CRPF was not to conduct operations, Rebello said. It was “to assist the state police and support them logistically because it is a force that comes from outside and does not know the local area”.

The Jharkhand MP gave a clean chit to Home Minister P. Chidambaram, saying he was “sincerely making an effort” to overcome the Maoist extremist challenge.

She called upon the governments in Maoist-affected states to do their bit.

“The home minister can only give them support by way of money, human resources, intelligence inputs and ideas or come into the picture when there is an overlapping of inter-state issues and he is doing that.”

She also urged the Maoists to accept Chidambaram’s offer of talks.

“They should shun violence for 72 hours and come to him. And he should talk to them with an open mind. After all, they are our brothers and sisters, prodigal sons and daughters.”

Rebello spoke repeatedly of the need to bring development to the tribal areas. The growth of the Maoist movement, she said, had its roots in the socio-economic situation.

Rebello did not spare her own party leaders Digvijay Singh and Ajit Jogi. “Digvijay Singh was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh for seven years and had a wonderful opportunity to transform Bastar. The Naxals had come there and Dantewada had begun to simmer.”

Similarly, for three years, there was Ajit Jogi’s government in Chhatisgarh. “He should have negotiated with them and brought them to the table and given them a good package and rehabilitated them. It is a small and compact state. ”

(The writer can be contacted at neerja_chowdhury@yahoo.com)