Mamata Banerjee to skip Delhi meet on Maoist menace

Kolkata: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will not be able to attend the high-level meeting with the chief ministers of Maoist-affected states convened by union home minister Rajnath Singh in Delhi on May 8. Ms Banerjee will be in the city to attend the swearing-in ceremony of two of her party leaders Chandrima Bhattacharya and Ujjal Biswas at Raj Bhavan on Monday. Later, she will chair the cabinet meeting at the state secretariat Nabanna.

State home secretary Moloy De and director general of police Surajit Kar Purakayastha will be going to Delhi in her stead. Besides Bengal, chief ministers of nine Naxal-hit states including Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar, Maharashtra, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh and the top brass of the home departments and police officials of these states have also been invited to the meeting.

The meeting will be held in the wake of the killing of 25 CRPF personnel the Naxal attack in Chhattisgarh recently. A source in the state home department said the union home ministry was planning to create a team of officers who would share intelligence and manpower to deal with the Maoists.

“The strategy of countering the maoists will also be reviewed in the meeting,” the official added.