Government’s focus on strengthening police to fight Maoists: Pillai

NEW DELHI - Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai Thursday said strengthening the state police to fight the Maoists is the cornerstone of the government’s policy.

Pillai was replying to a question on the ministry’s stand on using the army to contain Naxals, hours before a crucial meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security Thursday evening to deliberate upon a home ministry’s proposal for greater role of the army in tackling Maoists menace.

“I think basically the whole strategy has been to strengthen the state police to be able to fight the Maoists. The whole focus of our strategy has been that our paramilitary forces would help the state government and the state police forces to restore civil administration,” Pillai told NDTV.

“This remains the corner stone of our policy and we have finetuned some of the issues in the light of development that should take place. And I think it is better to wait till the cabinet committee takes a view on the proposals,” he added.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has convened the crucial meet, which will be attended by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Defence Minister A.K. Antony, Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Minister of External Affairs S.M. Krishna.

Manmohan Singh will chair the key meeting.

Though the army is currently engaged in training paramilitary forces and policemen in guerrilla warfare and is even willing to depute its mid-rank officer to help paramilitary forces in their operations against Maoists, they are wary of full-fledged deployment and getting embroiled in the Naxal areas.