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ELECTIONS '96

Bihar devises strategy to counter violence during counting

The Bihar police is gearing up to evolve a strategy to effectively counter the threat of violence from extremist outfits, besides the caste and communal forces, in the post-counting scenario.

A highly placed police source told United News of India that the government feared outbreak of large-scale violence and vandalism by these elements as soon as the election results starts pouring in, with counting beginning on March 2.

The police expect more threats from the outlawed Maoist Communist Centre and the CPI-ML (Party Unity) Naxalite groups, which are reportedly planning a gun battle against the policemen engaged in the combing operations in south and central Bihar.

Blasting of landmines, also a feature in 1996, claimed the lives of more than 20 policemen in the just concluded poll, and is considered a big threat for the police as it was very difficult to locate the mines planted in the vast jungle terrains, which had become safe hideouts for the Naxalite outfits.

The Bihar police had one battalion of trained forces for anti-Naxalite operations, but most of its commandoes were deployed for VVIP security duties.

The state government also found it difficult to engage whatever little force it had in the combing operations without the aid of the central paramilitary forces, which were withdrawn from Bihar to other states on election duty.

There was no guarantee whether the Centre would redeploy these central forces for anti-Naxalite operations after the election.

The state police also found itself in a piquant situation, with the Centre finding it difficult to constitute a joint intelligence command comprising senior officers of the contiguous states facing the Naxalite menace, such as Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

With no initiative coming from other states where the Naxalite problem was not alarming compared to Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, the proposal made by Bihar in the joint committee on security affairs in New Delhi did not yield the expected results as had been the case in Andhra Pradesh where the intelligence chiefs of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra were to devise joint action programmes against Naxalites.

The Bihar police was toying with the idea of announcing big rewards on the heads of the most wanted Naxalite of the outlawed MCC and Party Unity outfits on the lines of the Andhra Pradesh police, besides developing a rehabilitation package for the subversives who would surrender. The experiment yielded good results in Andhra Pradesh, where cult figure of the dreaded Peoples War Group of Naxalite Kondapalli Seetharamaiah, evading arrest in several cases, was nabbed by the police along with several others in the past years.

While several of the surrendered Naxalites were being rehabilitated with economic packages like provision of jobs and self-employment schemes, the government machinery in Andhra Pradesh started issuing wall posters and leaflets giving details of the Naxalites, leading to the identity of the underground militants.

UNI

Elections '98

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