More leaders from Cong echo Digvijay

NEW DELHI: Congress working committee member K Kesava Rao and former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajith Jogi have joined a growing chorus of Congress leaders in differing with the UPA government’s methods on dealing with the Maoist menace.

Mr Rao told ET that he “completely supported Mr Digvijay Singh except for the personal (attack) component on home minister P Chidambaram,” while Mr Jogi called for greater discussion in the party on the matter. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, earlier on Thursday, Mr Rao gave the example of Andhra Pradesh to make a case for other measures to tackle the problem.

“What I am saying is that development must come first. Start the political process. If there is a law and order problem , then the state must tackle it. What need is there to show bravado about this? It is the first political duty of the state to provide development. We have been talking about the dire socio-economic condition of the people (tribals) for over 40 years. If we are continuing to talk about it, then somewhere we have failed,” Mr Rao told ET.

Asked if this was the right time to commence talks with Maoists given the scale of the Dantewada attack in which 76 CRPF jawans lost their lives, Mr Rao replied: “100s of people had died in the Kargil war. Do we not talk to Pakistan?”

He said he agreed with AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh in stressing that development should come first.
Senior Chhattisgarh leader Ajit Jogi too said there was a need for discussions on what Mr Singh had proposed within the ruling party.

Speaking from Raipur, Mr Jogi told ET he believed that there were three aspects to the Maoist problem: “The socio-economic , the law and order side and the political process.” He said that the socio-economic aspect came first as the “root cause” of the growth of Maoist movement was “poverty, illiteracy” and related issues. “We will never be able to tackle the Maoist problem as long there is the nursery which is automatically attracting tribals,” he said. He added, however, that in the context of the Dantewada attacks , the law and order side of the problem assumed most importance at the moment.

However, Mr Jogi was quick to add that he could not take a public stand on the issue on whether he disagreed with home minister Chidambaram. Hence, he advocated greater discussions in the party. Though AICC spokesperson Janardhan Dwivedi attempted to repeat in the RS that individuals may have different views but the official line of the party was in tune with that of the government, ruling party MPs did not effectively defend the home minister.

Mr Dwivedi had on Wednesday indicated the party’s disapproval of Mr Singh’s act calling for divergent views to be expressed in party fora, former Union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar wasted no time to express backing for ‘development first’ line. He told a newspaper that Mr Digvijay Singh was “one lakh per cent right” in what he had said.

Mr Singh had, in a signed piece in ET on Tuesday had put the government in a spot coming as it did a day before Parliament convened for the second half of the budget session.