Naxals are heartless, cruel: Chidambaram

A day after the Naxal attacks in Dantewada that left over 40 people dead, on Tuesday, Home Minister P Chidambaram was at the CNN IBN studios where he offered fresh unconditional talks with the Maoists if they suspended violence for 72 hours. However, the Naxals have responded by rejecting the talks unless the government stopped Operation Green Hunt.

As UPA-II completes one year in power, the biggest challenge facing the Government has been internal security.

CNN-IBN Editor-In-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai spoke with the man with the toughest job in the country - Home Minister P Chidambaram.

Rajdeep Sardesai: It is ironical that the very week where the UPA is completing one year in power is also the week where there has been another deadly Naxal strike. In UPA-I the big challenge was seen as jihadi terror and we were seen to have not done too well with that, and this time it is Naxal terror. Again we seem to be struggling to deal with it.

P Chidambaram: No, we are not struggling. In fact, we brought it into focus last year. I brought it to the front of the agenda and I said we have underestimated the gravity of the CPI-Maoist challenge for many years and it is time we address it. We took it to the Cabinet Committee on Security only in September-October 2009 and we got a decision that month. We started the operations only in November.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Were we late to recognise the extent and magnitude of the Naxal threat?

P Chidambaram: In my view we underestimated the threat. But I won't comment on any period before I took charge.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Is the Government losing the war against Naxals? You recently told a CII conference: "There cannot be an Army or Air Force action against the Maoists. It is simply not our policy." After the attack on civilians yesterday do you believe that it is time to revisit that, to rethink it?

P Chidambaram: Let me reply to the comment: are we losing? I think these are, if I may say with respect, hasty statements. Even when I outlined the policy, I said it will take us two-three years to contain the Naxal threat. You never wipe out. There will always be remnants. There were remnants of the 1967 Naxalbari uprising; it lingered for many, many years. Therefore it will take us two to three years to contain the growth of Maoism or Naxalism.

So I don't think we can expect instant answers and if you forgive me, we can't have the deadlines you guys have. On the question whether it is time to revisit as I said we are not talking about air power, we are not talking about air strikes. We are talking about using aircraft. In fact in Jagdalpur when I addressed a press conference I made a distinction between air power and aircraft.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Aircraft for what?

P Chidambaram: Aircraft for surveillance, for supplies, for logistics, for induction, for evacuation; these are well known.

Rajdeep Sardesai: And you have full support for this from the chief ministers of the Naxal-affected states?

P Chidambaram: The chief ministers want air support. I am responding to their request.

Rajdeep Sardesai: I am asking this because you also said that you "have a limited mandate". Are you then going to ask for a greater mandate from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) and if so what is this greater mandate that you are looking for?

P Chidambaram: See these are questions which cannot be discussed in an interview. All I can say is what we got was a limited mandate and I accepted it. The collective wisdom of the CCS is certainly superior to the individual judgment of a minister. So we got a limited mandate. We are carrying out that limited mandate since November. It is only six months that the mandate has been implemented.

Rajdeep Sardesai: But what is a greater mandate?

P Chidambaram: We will have to go back and report what has happened since November and ask for a mandate which the chief ministers want. The chief ministers want a number of things. We will go back to the CCS and report to them what the chief ministers want and then we will try to get a mandate.

Rajdeep Sardesai: You have said that they want greater air support. The problem is it is not certain whether all the chief ministers want it as you are saying, but whether the UPA Government really wants or endorses this greater air support, particularly the Congress party? Is the Congress divided on its Naxal policy? If this is the biggest challenge why are we hearing so many discordant voices within the Congress party?

P Chidambaram: There are no discordant voices, and I think if you want your viewers to get more information to understand the gravity of the problem I think you should keep out this attempt to chase headlines. There is discordant voice. This is a robust democracy. There will be a healthy debate on every issue.

There are people who will emphasise on one aspect; there are people who will emphasis another aspect. But Government has been very clear from Day I. We believe this is a two-pronged approach. One prong is policing, police action; the other prong is of course development. There is another prong; the third aspect which has to be kept in mind: that we always keep the doors open for talks.

Now some will emphasise one prong, some will emphasise another prong. That does not make it a discordant party. It means that there is a healthy debate in the party. But I think the debate is settled now. After the Prime Minister's speech at the Panchayati Raj conference and after the Congress President's letter in the last issue of Sandesh the issue is settled.

Rajdeep Sardesai: The Congress President spoke about the root causes which need to be addressed. Are you saying that the Congress party today is united behind the need to take military action against the Naxals?

P Chidambaram: Military?

Rajdeep Sardesai: You said there are various prongs to this?

P Chidambaram: I said two.

Rajdeep Sardesai: There are two prongs to it. There is armed action?

P Chidambaram: Police action and development.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Digvijay Singh told us after the latest Dantewada incident that Chhattisgarh government must be held responsible. He in fact questioned you policies.

Mani Shankar Aiyer has said Digvijay Singh is 1000 per cent right when he stresses that we need to focus only on the root causes of Naxalism; and yet you are saying today that the Government is speaking in a coherent manner. You say I am chasing headlines but I am not. I am trying to understand are these voices all united in their ultimate objective? Or is there some element of disunity which is partly ideological. Why not concede that?

P Chidambaram: The debate is settled after the Prime Minister's speech at the Panchayati Raj conference and after the Congress President's letter. We will continue with a two-pronged approach.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Digvijay Singh says Maoists are misguided ideologues and does not see them as terrorists. Do you agree with that?

P Chidambaram: I do not have to agree or disagree with what everyone says. I have a job; I have a mandate. I have to implement that mandate. I have said that mandate is a limited mandate to extend support to the state government in the challenge posed by the Naxals. In doing so we have followed two--pronged approach: namely police action and development, and we keep the door for talks open.

Rajdeep Sardesai: A viewer has asked: does the Home Minister admit that he has failed in his anti-Naxal strategy and the Naxals are able to strike with alarming regularity. Over 300 have been killed till now this year?

P Chidambaram: I am aware of the numbers. It does disturb me because I said we underestimated the problem, we allowed them to grow, we have allowed them to recruit people, we have allowed them to acquire weapons, we have allowed them to expand their operations. The first time any one in the government who articulated the gravity of the problem was myself, and that is why we took it to the CCS.

We asked for mandate, we are helping the state government deal with the problem. I don't think there are any facile answers to the problem. There are no facile solutions. The states are fighting it from the front; we are supporting them with paramilitary forces, with weapons and with technical assistance.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Isn't part of the problem that states are moving in different directions? Different states have different ideas about how to tackle Naxalism?

P Chidambaram: I don't think so. Each state is entitled to follow a policy for intra-state operations. It is only when there are inter-state operations on tri-junctions or state borders that the central forces come in. Otherwise we provide them with the forces. I think all chief ministers are on board.

Rajdeep Sardesai: All Chief Ministers are on board? Shibu Soren, Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik are seen to be slightly softer when it comes dealing with Maoists?

P Chidambaram: These are value judgments that you make. I can only go by what they tell me and what there forces are doing on the ground. I know based upon my own information and intelligence that all the states are on board on the issue that the Naxal challenge has to be met squarely and that it can only be done by more forces on the ground, which is why they are recruiting furiously, they setting up training institutes.

They are training policemen; they are asking me for more forces, they are asking me for more assistance.

Rajdeep Sardesai: So all committed to stronger police action?

P Chidambaram: And development.

Rajdeep Sardesai: You said that there is the possibility of talks and a dialogue. In February the Maoists claimed that they were ready for dialogue but it was the Centre that was unwilling. How do respond?

P Chidambaram: I hope you are serious when you ask that question. I don't think that CPI(Maoist) has ever responded seriously to our offer of talks. Nor have they made serious offers for talks. They indulge in gimmick and I am afraid the media plays up that gimmick. I make the offer now. The Maoists should say we will abjure violence, we will suspend violence and actually suspend violence for any date they fix for 72 hours.

Suppose they say we will suspend violence from June 1 and suspend violence for 72 hours from June 1. I say within 72 hours we will get the chief ministers on board, we will respond, we will fix the date, time and place for talks and let the Maoists come and talk on anything that they wish to talk.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Will the Government also stop all operations against Maoists in those 72 hours?

P Chidambaram: It goes without saying. I wrote a letter to Swami Agniweesh on May 11 after he did his peace march from Raipur to Dantewada. I told him that on a specified date I would expect the CPI (Maoist) will stop all violent activities. We would closely observe if the CPI (Maoist) will maintain the position of no violence win those 72 hours.

It goes without saying that during those 72 hours the security forces will not conduct any operations against the CPI (Maoists). Once talks begin and are concluded successfully, hopefully, even otherwise there should be no violence indulged by the CPI (Maoists). That means no attack on infrastructure, no landmine blasts, no blast in school buildings, no targeting telephone towers, no killing people and calling them police informers. This is an offer that I made in Tehelka interview, in Parliament.

Rajdeep Sardesai: What will be the basis of the talks?

P Chidambaram: Whatever they bring on the agenda. They can bring anything to the agenda but during the period of talks there should be no violence.

Rajdeep Sardesai: There are many people like Swami Agniweesh, who complained that some of them - at least, are identified by the state as "Maoists sympathizers".

Human rights activists, intellectuals are being identified as "Maoists sympathizers". Even yesterday after the civilians were attacked by the Maoists, the Home Secretary's first statement was "Maoists sympathizers" must condemn these attacks.

P Chidambaram: That's a very legitimate demand.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Is this politics of condemnation going to end the violence? What is the purpose of it? Is it to just isolate those, who are seem to be "Maoists sympathizers"?

P Chidambaram: Politics of condemnation will not end the violence but the politics of condemning government, state government and the central government. You question the intentions of the government; you question the legitimacy of the state power, you question the objectives that government has set for itself in these anti-Naxals operations. But you won't condemn "deliberate, cruel and heartless violence" that has happened yesterday.

Who have died yesterday? Tribal SPOs; many of them were tribals, civilians - practically all of them tribals were killed. Now the question is why they were killed? Why was the bus blown up by the Maoists? If the civil society organisations which rush to government to condemn government, question the legitimacy of the government action and won't say a word on what happened yesterday - that's a very sad commentary on the state of our civil society organisations.

Rajdeep Sardesai: But don't you think that many of them need to be embraced in a sense of a potential mediators, instead of isolating them?

P Chidambaram: I'm not isolating them. I have written to many leaders and well-known people.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Is there a distinction between the acts of violence against civilians and the acts of violence against CRPF?

P Chidambaram: No one in our Parliamentary system, i.e. democratic republic system has right to use violence as a means of redressal grievances. I can understand the causes that just give rise to rebellion. But the rebellion must be channelised in the only manner that is allowed in the democracy.

Namely you can overthrow governments and replace with a new government with the help of elections. The state has a right to use violence that is why it is a state. The state has a right to use force but the state must observe that human rights must not commit excesses and always act according to the law. Only the state has the right to use force. Rest no one has the right to use force.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Do you believe, as Digvijay Singh is suggesting, that there was an intelligence failure yesterday? That to have (a) a heavily mine infested road, which civilians and SPOs together traveling in a bus was a bad idea?

P Chidambaram: I won't jump to any conclusion. All I know is that this was a regular commercial bus service running on a district road. Therefore it is not that the bus went for that road for the first time or that road was used by the bus for the first time.

Rajdeep Sardesai: But there is a common belief that Maoists are in touch with local contractors to use landmines on those roads?

P Chidambaram: Nevertheless people need bus services to travel.

Rajdeep Sardesai: But there were SPOs traveling on that bus with civilians. SPOs have become a soft targets?

P Chidambaram: If regular commercial buses are targeted by Maoists, I think it is an example of telling how heartless and cruel the Naxalites are.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Do you still believe that Naxals are getting arms, money and material form across the border?

P Chidambaram: The bulk of the arms they use are "looted arms". They also get arms form local arms factories, illegal arm factories or country made guns. But quite a significant amount of arms can be smuggled today from Bangladesh and Myanmar. They are not short of money, they get it from extortion. Every truck that passes through that region has to pay a levy. Every mining company pay levies.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Did Digvijay Singh, who in a signed article called you "arrogant", has apologised you? Is it true?

P Chidambaram: He met me and we had a conversation. As far as I'm concerned the matter is over.

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