Govt hasn't surrendered to Maoists: Buddhadeb

DOING THE DEAL: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee defends decision on Maoists.

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New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minsiter Buddhadeb Bhatacharjee defended his administration's controversial decision to swap 22 Maoist sympathisers in custody for captured policeman Atindranath Dutta saying the situation was an exception and not a norm and that the war against the Naxals will continue.

"if that's the message they (Naxals) have taken from this, then they have taken the wrong message. I will teach them a lesson," Bhattacharjee said.

The Chief Minister claimed that this was no surrender to the Naxals.

"It crossed our minds that this is unprecedented, but I am telling you this is only an exception," he reiterated.

However, the question everyone was asking was whether it was an exception that portayed the state as weak?

Bhattacharjee disagreed, strongly refuting his own Home Secretary's - Ardhendhu Sen - comments drawing parallels with the IC 814 hijack and with Rubaiyah Sayeed's release.

Ardhendhu Sen had said in an interview to CNN-IBN on Friday: "That kind of a question turns up whenever such a situation comes, whether it's an attack on a police station or a hijack of a plane. Yes we are worried, but such situations can arise. The answer is to be prepared in such a way that such things cannot happen - whether they feel emboldened or not. If they feel emboldened we have to feel that we have to get our act together, we have to be much more alert than we were previously. So we should still come out on the winning side."

But the crucial question is when the security forces had narrowed down the area the Maoists were believd to be holed up in, why then was a call made from Kolkata asking the forces to hold fire? Bhattacharjee has admitted that this was a concern which Union Home Minister P Chidambaram expressed.

"He (Chidambaram) asked me why the forces were not allowed to complete the operation, but he too knows it's not that easy," was all Bhattacharjee had to say on the matter.

Even so, can the state government choose not to negotiate if another policeman is abducted in the near future? For now, the Lalgarh offensive continues and the Chief Minister - once dubbed not just a murderer but also a liar - continues to cock a snook at the state government.