Maoists call for Orissa bandh on June 30

BHUBANESWAR: On a day when the Jagatsinghpur administration accompanied by police reached the conflict zone in Dhinkia and Gobindpur, the proposed site for Posco steel project, the CPI (Maoist) came out in the open opposing State Government’s land acquisition drive.The rebel party has given a call for Orissa Bandh on June 30 over what it calls the forcible land acquisition and a host of other issues.In a statement on Monday, State organisational secretary of the Maoist party Sabyasachi Panda said, the Naveen-led Government, with ample support from the Centre, had been displacing the locals from their native land only to hand it over to a foreign company. The coercive method it has adopted to acquire land is not acceptable, he added.Panda, alias Sunil, said the resistance by the locals to the land acquisition is being suppressed which points at muzzling of the democratic rights of people.The party condemned the forcible entry of police into the area and administration’s attempt to deprive people of their livelihood.The Maoist leader stated that the Orissa Police had been targeting rebels and going after them in a systematic manner.Listing out the recent arrests of the likes of Sudhakar Mandal, he said, the police are violating the basic tenets of the Constitution by not producing them before the court of law within 24 hours.The rebel party, which also came down on the Centre for effecting a rise in the prices of cooking gas and kerosene, which it said will immensely burden the common man, has decided to observe Orissa Bandh on June 30 to lodge its protest.Meanwhile, Maoist sympathiser Dandapani Mohanty has also objected to the alleged arrest of Pratap Chinara from Konark.Convenor of BBJB, Chinara was allegedly held from near Konark.