Sort out contradiction in Cabinet on Maoist issue: CPM to PC

The CPI (M) today asked home minister P Chidambaram not to make "irrelevant feints" against it on the Maoist issue, but take initiative to sort out the "glaring contradiction" within the Union cabinet on it.

"Evidently, the home minister is put in an unenviable position when a colleague of his in the cabinet takes positions that are contrary to that of his ministry and government," CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said.

Right from the beginning of joint anti-Maoist operations in Lalgarh, railway minister Mamata Banerjee "has made known her displeasure and asked for recall of central paramilitary forces. She had extended support to a front organisation of the Maoists.

"Another minister belonging to her party has publicly admitted to knowing in advance about the Rajdhani train stoppage," he said.

"It would be better if Chidambaram took the initiative to sort out this glaring contradiction within the cabinet and not make irrelevant feints against the CPI(M)," Karat said.

Karat was responding to Chidambaram's statement that CPI(M) thought the Maoists were comrades-in-arms in their fight against "bourgeois" parties like Congress. "But now they have realised that they were underestimating the gravity of the problem," the home minister had said yesterday.

Observing that it was "surprising" that the minister had "chosen to ignore" the history of Naxalite or Maoist movement, Karat said the Maoists had been "unremittingly hostile" to CPI(M) since they split in the late 1960s.