Digvijay appeals naxals to shun violence

Raipur, May 29, 2013

Four days after naxal attack on Congress parivartan yatra, AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh has appealed to extremists to shun violence and join mainstream life. 

Singh’s appeal came in form of a letter he has written to media through Chhattisgarh Congress on Wednesday. In this letter, he also paid tribute to deceased Congmen including PCC chief Nandkumar Patel.

He said when chief minister Raman Singh had admitted that naxal attack on Congress leaders was consequence of security lapse then why responsibility had not been fixed by far. 

He asked why the police took almost three hours to reach ground zero when police station was just 5 km away from it. He further asked why the police did not adopt standard operating process. 

He pointed that despite Congress giving information to police pertaining to its parivartan yatra in Sukma and other areas ten days before, the police did not conduct search operation in the sensitive areas.

He also asked the government to clarify whether the naxals attacked parivartan yatra due to ideological differences or the entire attack was aimed to brutally kill top leader of Chhattisgarh Congress.

He further wrote that the government also needed to explain why naxals targeted Patel who was never a supporter of anti-Maoists’ operation salva judum, Patel’s son Dinesh and 84-year-old Vidyacharan Shukla.

Congmen surprised over Diggi’s soft tone towards Maoists

Digvijay Singh, who was chief minister of undivided Madhya Pradesh for ten years, was expected to give instant reaction on naxal attack and attend state Congress head Nandkumar Patel’s funeral for his closeness with the latter, but surprisingly he did not come and remained missing from the limelight due to unknown reasons. After four days, his letter appeared on Wednesday reflecting his soft tone towards naxals in form of an appeal. 

The Congress workers are astonished by Singh’s appeal as they were expecting him to follow the suit of prime minister Manmohan Singh and party supremo Sonia Gandhi in criticising May 25 incident and assuring them that the Centre would take appropriate action to eradicate Maoists.