By IANS,
Lalgarh (West Bengal) : A Trinamool Congress team, including two union ministers, reached here Tuesday to get a first hand idea of the situation after security forces were deployed to flush out Maoist rebels from this trouble-torn belt in West Midnapore district.
Minister of State for Shipping Mukul Roy, Minister of State for Rural Development Sisir Adhikari and Leader of Opposition in the state assembly Partha Chattopadhyay were part of the delegation.
“We have not faced any obstruction so far,” Chattopadhyay said over phone from Lalgarh.
There have been allegations of atrocities by security forces that were deployed to control Maoist violence in the area.
Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram had Monday asked the state’s Left Front government to ensure security for the Trinamool team after party chief Mamata Banerjee spoke to him.
Amid heavy security, the Trinamool team visited a school and spoke to students, teachers and guardians who complained about the disruption of studies after the security forces camped in the schools of the area.
The students, teachers and parents have over the past few days been demanding that the forces vacate the schools.
The Trinamool leaders are to visit the Lalgarh police station and some of the villages in the area.
Roy and Adhikari had allegedly been obstructed by the state’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) activists last month when they were proceeding to two troubled areas in this belt.
The security operation was launched in and around Lalgarh last month after Maoists torched police camps and drove away the police and civil administration to establish a virtual free zone in the region since last November.
Lalgarh has been on the boil since November when a landmine exploded on the route of the convoy of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and then central ministers Ram Vilas Paswan and Jitin Prasada.
Complaining of police atrocities after the blast, angry tribals backed by Maoists launched an agitation, virtually cutting off the area from the rest of West Midnapore district.
Maoists are active in areas under 21 police stations in the state’s three western districts – West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia.