All-party meet opposes 'pernicious Maoist doctrine'

Shocked over the audacious Naxal attack in Chhattisgarh, political parties today favoured use of all legitimate means to "quell" armed insurgency, underlining that they cannot accept the "pernicious Maoist doctrine".

Ruling out any compromise on the issue, the parties in a unanimous resolution backed the Centre's two-pronged strategy of sustained operations against Maoists and rapid development of Naxal-affected areas.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his opening remarks at the all-party meeting called in the wake of the May 25 Naxal attack against Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh, said there was a need to further fine-tune and strengthen the strategy.

Terming it as a frontal attack on democratic foundations of the nation, Singh said, "The strength and robustness of the democratic forces in our country would suffer if the space for political activity gets restricted because of fear or terror."

He said the Chhattisgarh attack marked for the first time that Naxals have targeted top leadership of a political party in a "systematic" manner.

The political parties resolved that nothing could be more dangerous than the insurgency of the CPI (Maoist) in pursuit of its misguided goal of overthrowing Parliamentary democracy and the Constitution of India through violent means.

The meeting decided that the states would lead the fight against Maoists and the Centre assured all assistance in this regard.

"We urge them (Centre and the states) to use all legitimate means to defend the security of the country and its institutions and quell armed insurgency and violence," the resolution said.

The meeting was attended by Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Leaders of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, BSP chief Mayawati, SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, Shiv Sena leader Anant Geete, JD-U President Sharad Yadav among others.