Judicial activism to blame for Naxal rise

MYSORE: Union law minister Veerappa Moily on Monday asked the judiciary to restrain itself from admitting PILs and said "unrealistic judicial activism on the part of the judges is one of the main reasons for increased Naxalism in the country".

Talking to reporters here, he said the Supreme court judgment in the Godavarman case, which in his words was against the ground realities and prevailing conditions in the forests, led to the displacement of a large number of tribals forcing them to join Maoist groups. "If the court had exhibited restraint and gone according to ground realities today situation in the forests would have been totally different," he said, adding that even the new Supreme Court CJ had raised the point.

In the Godavarman case, the SC had expanded the scope of the term "forest" and included within its scope forests mentioned in the government record as well as forests in the dictionary meaning irrespective of the nature of ownership and classification on December 12, 1996.

Moily said his concern was that when judges admit PILs and deliver judgments, "they should be realistic and go by the ground realities instead of believing arguments". He echoed Congress leader Dijvijay Singh's on "Salwa Judum" and said it was a blunder committed by the state government to deal with the Naxal menace. "There is no difference of opinion in the UPA government on the issue of tackling Naxalism," he claimed.

Naxal sympathizers will find it tough

NEW DELHI: The massacre of civilians by Maoists could not have come at a worse time for their champions and sympathisers among civil society and the political class. It exposes their claim about Maoists being "misplaced ideologues" — who are fighting the cause of the poor and the downtrodden — as false just when a propaganda has been cranked up to guilt trip the state into abandoning the fight against the extremists.

The massacre of bus passengers is a far more heinous crime than the massacre of CRPF personnel. The paramilitary personnel who were butchered came from families of marginal farmers and landless labourers. Though they did not qualify to be class enemies whose annihilation was an ideal to be achieved by Maoists, their pamphleteers have sought to justify their criminal deed by tagging their victims as mercenaries of the anti-people state.

Moreover, they were armed and trained to fight back in their defence. The bus passengers who were killed could not be accused of any such crime. Even if you count out the 20 alleged Special Police Officers, the Maoists, in their pursuit of the goal of capture of state power, killed at least 30 innocent unarmed combatants.

The defenders of Maoists raise a cacophony of protests against collateral casualties US forces cause even when they are on genuine anti-terror missions. But there are many instances when even the US has called off operations that looked set to eliminate terrorists for the fear of causing collateral damage.

In fact, those who regularly attack the government for not agreeing to a truce on terms dictated by Maoists cannot justify the killing of the SPOs either. For, to act otherwise would amount to conceding the spurious argument that while the government should give up violence, Maoists are justified in killing whoever they treat as 'class enemies' and their adjuncts since they are fighting for the rights of the poor.

The latest brutality should alert civil society to the fact that while Maoists will exploit their resourcefulness for tactical reasons, they actually care two hoots for what civil rights activists and others stand for. The bus passengers were killed just when advocates of Maoists in the political class and among rights activists were gloating over their alleged success in forcing the government to concede that the threat of extremists could not be tackled merely by using force. The killing of civilians shows that for Marxists, indiscriminate violence remains the most preferred weapon, although for tactical reasons, they may invoke the Constitution and the rule of law enshrined there.