From Our Correspondent
GUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Tuesday saw Maoists’ design behind the agitation launched by landless people or illegal settlers on government land under the banner of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samity (KMSS) whose leader Akhil Gogoi has already been arrested and is in judicial custody now. “The government has reasons to infer that Maoists elements may have infiltrated into the KMSS that is fighting for landless in the state. Though we don’t have direct evidence of KMSS leader Akhil Gogoi’s direct links with the Maoists, I can confirm that some KMSS members have gone for training under the Maoists in Orissa and we have already arrested two such members,” Gogoi said.
Gogoi further said the KMSS was working in tandem with two organizations which are known as frontal organizations of the banned Unite Liberation Front of Assam (anti-talks faction). Gogoi named these two organizations as Assam Chatra Yuba Sangathan and Chah Janajati Surakhya Samity. He said Maoists elements are present in the state under different garb.
It may be mentioned that the anti-talks faction of the ULFA led by its ‘commander in chief’ Paresh Barua has extended its ‘full support’ to the KMSS-led agitation demanding rights of indigenous people of Assam.
Gogoi reiterated that his government was not going to talks with KMSS leaders as they had indulged in violence during the agitation against eviction drive to root out encroachers on forest land, hulls and wetlands in and around Guwahati.
“We are going to talks to only affected people and victims of the he eviction drive which has been stalled now. The government has policy to give land settlement to those poor landless people who have been living in forest land and hills in and around Guwahati for the last 15 years, but not to those affluent people who have been occupying such land. The committee we have constituted to review the land settlement policy will take the final decision,” Gogoi said.
