By IANS,
Shillong: Former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno A. Sangma Sunday criticised Home Minister P. Chidambaram for his alleged statement to “annihilate the tribal population” in a bid to weed out Maoist menace.
“I totally disapproved with his (Chidambaram) statement to annihilate tribals and why should tribals be annihilated to win over the Maoists?” Sangma said to IANS.
“Now that India has benefited so much from minerals available in the tribal areas… be it coal, limestone, iron ore or uranium, the government wants to annihilate tribals for its failure to develop the tribal areas,” the veteran Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader said.
“Arm-twisting is not the answer to the Maoists problem,” Sangma, a tribal Garo leader himself, said, adding “but, it can be sorted out if the government shows the way through its developmental activities.”
“I am sure the government can sort the problem (Maoists) by resolving the underlying issues of poverty, illiteracy, deprivation and lack of justice,” Sangma said.
He said that the government must act on infrastructure development as “sorting out the issue through the barrel of a gun” would only further invigorate the Maoist problem.