The Left lambasted the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Tuesday for drawing “superficial” comparisons between the violence in Nandigram and the post-Godhra riots.
It added that NHRC should probe the incidents since January 2007 in Nandigram and then fix responsibility. CPM and CPI MPs submitted a memorandum to NHRC citing objections to the statements attributed to the chairperson, Justice (retired) S. Rajendra Babu who observed that “Nandigram and Godhra were severe assaults on the face of democracy”.
“As the head of an institution like the NHRC, it is expected of him to verify all the facts before such an indictment is made of a state government,” the MPs said.
Left’s Sitaram Yechury, Brinda Karat, D. Raja and Basudeb Acharia argued that the “Nandigram developments are a result of a political conspiracy to capture territory by an alliance of parties who were rejected in the elections and have used the poor as hostage to their plan.”
Social activist Medha Patkar, part of a fact-finding team that visited Nandigram, said: “The capture and subjugation of rebellious villages was not an aberration or a mistake. It was a planned action with full coordination between the state administration and the party.”
“Even the CPM has not been able to show the most irrefutable evidence of an armed resistance by the Maoists or the BUPC in injured or dead CPM supporters. All the wounded were BUPC supporters,” she said in her report.
{{/usCountry}}“Even the CPM has not been able to show the most irrefutable evidence of an armed resistance by the Maoists or the BUPC in injured or dead CPM supporters. All the wounded were BUPC supporters,” she said in her report.
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