Jan. 10: Following the January 7 massacre of villagers in the Lalgarh area, which is the biggest indication of the bloody confrontation in the run-up to elections in West Bengal, reports of the CPM arming its cadres and forcing the state administration to set up vigilante groups similar to the Salwa Judum that exists in Chhattisgarh.
The Union home ministry has already predicted the violence will be “unprecedented,” saying that 95 camps of armed Marxists cadres are up and running in West Midnapore. The CPM camps have been set up under the guise of fighting Maoists, with the “tacit support” of the state administration. Clubbed together, the battleground comprising the districts of West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia make for 40 Assembly berths in West Bengal, and the CPM had won all these seats in 2006.
The surge of the Trinamul Congress has made the communists apprehensive of losing a chunk of the seats. It is being claimed that the CPM, in the garb of fighting Maoists has begun setting up camps to “provide arms training to villagers to fight Maoists.”
Sources said the setting up of the camps was in the line of the controversy-ridden, state-sponsored Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh.