Maoists plan to boost military capabilities

Facing the heat from security forces, Maoists have chalked out elaborate plans to raise an additional 14 battalions of People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the military wing of the CPI (Maoist). According to an internal document of the outlawed outfit, procured by the anti-Maoist intelligence wing of Andhra Pradesh Police, the task of reorganisation of PLA, training, procurement and placement of forces has been entrusted to a key member of the party’s Central Committee (CC) Sonu alias Nambala Keshav Rao. The Maoist document, dated June 28, surfaced after week-long celebrations in the forests of Chhattisgarh to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the formation of CPI (Maoists) following the merger of People’s War Group (PWG) and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). The celebrations were followed by a meeting of the party’s Central Committee at an unknown location in Jammu and Kashmir last week. The document indicated Maoists plans to declare several regions in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra as “guerilla zones” in the near future. The specially-trained guerillas will take positions in these zones and continue their support for what they call “people’s agitations” for land. ‘The Maoist dalams (teams) and action squads will wage war not only in their strongholds but also in the new areas to demonstrate our strength and commitment” the document said.Fifty-eight-year-old Nambala Keshav Rao, alias Basavaraj, accused in over two dozen cases and also said to be the accused number two in last month’s Maoist attack on Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh, is the brain behind the Maoist intelligence network. In a statement handed over to some select media organisations, Namburi Pratap, a spokesman of the Central Committee, accused the AP police of spreading false reports about the illness of some of the Maoist top guns like CPI (Maoist) Secretary Ganapati, Katakam Ramakrishna and Sudarshan, as part of a propaganda to mislead the cadres. The statement, handed over to mediapersons at Paderu town in the north coastal district of Visakhapatnam, indicated that the District Committees of CPI (Maoist) would be revived in AP after a gap of over eight years. Reports from Chhattisgarh say that the Maoists have constituted ‘Baal Action Teams’ (BAT) to deploy school children in different capacities, to counter the build up of security forces. BAT, a specialised school children unit of Maoist which has started operating in Bastar region in the past several months, would also help Baal Sanghams (children’s associations) and Chhatra Sanghams (students’ associations) that are already functional in the areas, police sources said.