Fear hits Telangana as Naxals call for poll boycott
K Sunil Kumar in Hyderabad
'Do not vote in the coming Lok Sabha election.'
Posters, spreading this intimidating message, have sprung up in the interior villages of Telangana region, Andhra Pradesh.
Fear is spreading in the Naxalite-dominated Telangana areas. And the police are bracing up for the challenge as the banned People's War Group plans to ruthlessly enforce its poll boycott call.
''Rush 100 companies of paramilitary forces,'' went an SOS from state Director General of Police H J Dora.
In Karimnagar district, the police raided the homes of several
former Naxalites and questioned them about the Naxalites who were trying to enforce the boycott call.
Dora does not want to take any chances, as the Naxalites followed their boycott call with a brutal attack on Bharatiya Janata Party leader B Sammaiah Goud in Warangal district.
Goud, who is the Regonda mandal parishad president, has been warned against campaigning in the election.
Several leaders of various political parties in Parkal mandal in the district, who were summoned by the Naxalites, have been warned of dire consequences if they partook in electioneering.
The PWG believes the election is a farce. ''Ask your leaders if they have done anything for you,'' the Naxalites have been telling the people.
The PWG had issued similar boycott calls in previous elections. With the police opposing their call tooth and nail -- and reportedly forcing the people to vote -- elections in Telangana have invariably been violent.
Caught in the crossfire are millions of innocent voters who bear the brunt, struggling to conquer the devil-and-the-deep-sea dilemma.
However, Naxalite leader Muppala Laxman Rao, who has reportedly taken the place of PWG founder Kondapalli Sitaramaiah, refutes the argument that the boycott call is anti-people.
Addressing the media in his hideout in the jungles of Adilabad
district, Laxman Rao said, ''More than the PWG calling for a boycott of the election, it is the people themselves who do not want to vote. If some people are voting, it is because of the police's terror tactics.''
Laxman Rao, popularly known as Ganapathy among the
PWG rank and file, said, ''Contrary to police propaganda, the PWG has never killed nor harmed anyone who participated in elections.... Just as the people have a right to vote, they also have a right not to vote. Why should the police force them to vote?''
The Marxist-Leninist leader was critical of all the political parties for
the ''unholy alliances among themselves''.
Asked why the PWG did not come out in the open and contest the
poll, he said the political atmosphere was vitiated by
political parties which did not have the common man's interest in mind. ''They are all slaves of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United States,'' he said.
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