Naxal threat has not become worse: Patil

THE RED MENACE: Union Home Minister says he is sure the police can wipe out rebels.

        

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Shivraj Patil: I am not going to comment on anybody. I am going to give you my own views. I am going to give you the statistics. The difficulty is if we are here to understand the problem and understand the solution, and create a psychology in the country which is helpful, useful to control this kind of activity and reduce the fear psychosis, we will take one step.

If you want to create a political impact by adopting certain figures and not quoting certain other figures, then it is going to be different.

Karan Thapar: I’ll tell you why there is confusion in the country, Home Minister. You maintain a particular position, you are backing it up with your statistics. I am hearing you; the country is hearing you. The problem is that other members of the government, including the Prime Minister, have given opposite impression.

Shivraj Patil: No, not at all. If you have seen the statement made by the Prime Minister while speaking to the Chief Minister also, you would have found something different. You can’t pick one sentence here and one sentence there and ask a minister in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister to contradict his statement without contradicting it all. This is unethical.

Karan Thapar: I am not asking you to contradict the Prime Minister, that would be wrong of me to do. But the point is that the thought the Prime Minister has expressed, that this is the single biggest security challenge. He said it twice. He said it in December, he said it in 2004.

Shivraj Patil: I also said it – that if anybody dies, we should be worried. If there is bloodshed taking place we should be worried. And that is if he is cautioning the people to help the activity of the government and the entire society the violence of the entire society to control the violence and bloodshed and terrorism, he’s not wrong. But you can’t have his minister contradicting his statement taking out of context one sentence here, one sentence there.

Karan Thapar: Let me put this to you: You yourself agree that the two states where the problem is the worst are Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Your own Ministry’s figures say that 67 per cent of all incidents and 76 per cent of all casualties happen in those two states. It’s clearly the heart of the problem.

And yet, and yet, Ajay Sahni, the Director of the respected Institute of Conflict Management says–and I am quoting to you: “Chhattisgarh is the one state which is an example of utter incompetence!” He says if there is one example of a state failing to handle counter-terrorism, it’s Chhattisgarh.

Shivraj Patil: Well, again I’d like to say that Chhattisgarh may be ruled by a party which is not with the present government at the national level. And yet, it is not the duty of the Home Minister of India to make statements as he likes and demoralise the government, demoralise the police forces and also add fuel to the fire of fear.