Mukesh Ranjan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 12

With credible inputs of alleged urban Maoists front organisations trying to enter the mainstream by focussing on Dalits and Muslims, the Centre is working out a detailed plan to launch a “concerted crackdown” on them.

A decision in this regard was taken during a recent high-level meeting in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) where a report from the Maharashtra Government on the alleged Maoist plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi was discussed, sources said.

Even the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in its report to the MHA has alerted the government that in view of the Left-Wing Extremist (LWE) Groups finding difficult to bring in tribals on their ranks, their “urban front organisations” are now trying hard to expand the social base by instilling “sense of alienation” among Dalits and Muslims and “mobilising them against the government”, sources in the government confirmed.

The reports claimed that the subversive designs of the extremist groups to indoctrinate the target classes are achieved through propaganda in universities and colleges. An MHA official said: “Based on the IB report and details provided by the Maharashtra Police, the Centre is planning a crackdown on them.”

The IB report also claimed that the recent arrest of five “suspected Maoists” in Maharashtra indicates that the Maoist front organisations are active in several cities in the garb of NGOs and civil rights organisations.

Quoting the report, sources in the MHA said, these front organisations were active in cities like Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Ranchi, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Madurai, Nagpur and Pune. It alleges that these front organisations provide logistical support to the armed Maoist cadres in the jungles while recruiting “educated youths to support the movement”, they added.