‘Maoist violence unacceptable’

The poor who the Naxalites claim to represent, have genuine concerns on land acquisition, mining, structure of governance and bureaucracy, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said.

The poor who the Naxalites claim to represent, have genuine concerns on land acquisition, mining, structure of governance and bureaucracy, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said.

If the poor feel existing structures of governance are anti- poor, the government is obliged to revisit them to make it proper, the home minister said.

But violence, he made clear, was unacceptable.

“We reject armed liberation struggle. We understand they claim to represent the poor but we cannot accept violence,” he said.

Chidambaram — who called Naxalism a “solvable” problem — said the Centre was taking state governments on board and helping them take counter insurgency measures.

One-third of the 620-odd districts in India are affected by Naxalism.

Referring to 26/11, he said, our capacity to deal with terror strike is much greater today than a year ago. “Should there be another attack our response will be swift and decisive,”he added.

He said we must not even try to stop anyone to go and work in a foreign country but create a climate that encourages “seamless” move from India to a foreign country and back.

“If a person of 25 is interested in going to say US and work there for 20 years and at 45 wants to come back and work in India, we should let him go and come back, like many doctors are doing today.”

The minister was speaking at the launch of the Bloomberg-UTV partnership in New Delhi.