Kerala chief secretary justifies action against Maoists

Kerala Chief Secretary Tom Jose has triggered a row by publishing an article justifying the police action that killed four Maoists.

He termed the act of Maoists as terrorism, even as a strong political controversy was going on in Kerala regarding the killing of the Maoists in the forest areas of Agali in Palakkad.

While the Opposition Congress raised the issue in the Assembly on Tuesday and asked Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan whether the chief secretary was supposed to write such an article on a controversial issue, CPI, which is a key coalition partner of the ruling Left Front, also condemned Tom's views.

The CPI has been strongly maintaining that the Maoists were recently killed in a fake encounter.

Vijayan evaded a direct reply maintaining that he did not read the article.

It is reliably learnt that the chief secretary later conveyed to the chief minister that he had only pointed out the facts pertaining to Maoist activities.

But the chief minister was learnt to have expressed displeasure as the Maoist killings is in a thick of controversy in the state now.

Incidentally the chief secretary published the article in an English daily a day after Vijayan condemned the "glorifying" of Maoists.

In the article tiled It is like war: Kill or be Killed, Tom said that those who resort to violence to achieve political objectives should be called terrorists and there was no rationale in stating that Maoists got same human rights as normal citizens.