An acrimonious debate began in the Lok Sabha on Thursday over the Dantewada massacre, as senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha allged that the Congress had taken help from Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh for “narrow political gains”.
Congress MPs Jagdambika Pal, Mahabal Mishra, Sandeep Dikshit, and even the two Parliamentary Affairs ministers V Narayanaswamy and P K Bansal, rose to their feet to strongly protest this allegation. Congress president Sonia Gandhi was seen speaking to Home Minister P Chidambaram in the front benches.
Lashing out at the UPA govt, Yashwant Sinha said : “We in the Opposition stand fully with the government in its fight against Maoists, but while we stand united, the ruling coalition stands divided.”
Sinha was obviously referring to different voices emanating from Digvijay Singh and Mamata Banerjee over the anti-Maoist operation issue.
“For 3 hours the Maoists were gunning down our CRPF jawans, they were sending SOS over wireless, but no aid reached them”, said Sinha amidst shouts of “shame, shame” from opposition benches. “Why was the helicopter standing ready at Raipur not used?”, questioned the BJP leader.
Quoting Home Ministry statistics, Sinha said, 4,246 lives were lost in Maoist violence from 2004 to 2009, out of which 2,524 lives were lost in Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand alone. Compare this with lives lost in wars with Pakistan in 1948 (1,500 lives), 1965 (3,000), 1971 (5,300) Kargil war (522) and IPKF in Sri Lanka (1700), said Sinha.
An angry Parliamentary Affairs Minister P K Bansal rose to say, that the opposition parties in power in Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh were in cahoots with the Maoists. “They speak something here and speak something else there. On one hand you speak of supporting the Centre, and the other you are trying to use this incident to political advantage”, said Bansal.
Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar appealed to all members to refrain from making charges and counter-charges on a serious issue. “All parties should put their heads together to try to end this menace”, she said.
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