By IANS,
Kolkata : West Bengal’s ruling Left Front (LF) Monday decided that the people arrested during Lalgarh operation will be charged under the sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and not as per the more stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
The state government also decided that the UAPA would not be under the police jurisdiction and would only be implemented after the permission of the state home secretary.
The decisions were taken by the state cabinet’s core committee that met here.
“Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has assured the core committee members that none of the 22 people arrested so far during the joint operation in Lalgarh will be charged under the UAPA. They have been arrested under sections of the IPC,” state PWD Minister and member of the core committee Kshiti Goswami told reporters after the meeting.
“The chief minister has informed us that the act was passed in parliament in 2008. The ban on the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) has been imposed by the centre under the act. So the state government cannot say no to the act.”
According to sources, the government has also taken a decision to form a team, comprising five principal secretaries of different departments of the state government, which will visit Lalgarh to monitor the situation.
The team would stay there in the troubled zone and interact with the villagers. On the basis of the team’s findings, the government will prepare a blueprint of its further developmental activities in the violence-scarred region.