An extremist party founded by the pro-Beijing faction of the Communist Party. The CPI(ML) was started in March, 1967 at Naxalbari in Siliguri sub-division of Darjeeling district. Kanu Sanyal and Charu Majumdar were primarily responsible for the formation of this political party.
The Naxalites owed allegiance to Mao’s China and were accused of extraterritorial loyalty. They had no faith in the democratic process and were determined to capture power through violence.
The Naxalites have sizeable presence in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and West Bengal. In the seventies the Naxalites caught the imagination of brilliant young students studying in the various prestigious universities of India including the Delhi University.
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The Siddharth Shankar Ray government in West Bengal was primarily responsible in checking the growth of the Naxalite movement. The People’s War Group and a few other splinter parties including the Maoists have been primarily responsible for spreading a reign of terror in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala.
The PWG occasionally attracts the headlines in the press when it captures bureaucrats or politicians in order to secure the release of their cadres arrested by the police. The PWG (People’s War Group) is often engaged in bloody clashes with the Ranbir Sena in various parts of Bihar.
In Sept. ’99, the PWG did not spare officers of the Central government when a few of them were taken hostages. The CPI (ML) has lost its sheen and survives for all the wrong reasons. The PWG killed one of the MP Ministers in Dec. ’99. The Cong (1) govt, in Andhra Pradesh has decided to engage the PWG in constructive engagement after the May 2004 elections.
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Naxal activities as of 2009 encompass almost one third of the country, and their activities are spreading elsewhere also. They are very effective in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa. Police stations are torched and looted, innocent civilians killed and maimed.
The governments, both at the Centre and the States, have no clue as to how to tackle this menace. Salva Julum, a new methodology adopted by some states to counter the menace has proved ineffective as the root cause is rural poverty, deprivation and loss of their agricultural land to the sharks. The CPI Maoist was banned in 2009.