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Bengal CM cautions against ultras

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya has asked the police to be extra vigilant against increasing militant activities in strategically located north Bengal areas following a visit to Siliguri on Friday.

Bhattacharya's warning comes in the wake of several incidents of violence and reports of stepped up presence of militants of the banned National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) and the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA).

Both these north-east based militant groups are suspected to be helping nascent outfits in north Bengal, the Kanmatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) and the Gorkha Liberation Organisation (GLO).

The KLO, formed to create a state of Kamatapur in 1995, has taken considerable help of the Assam-based United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). At least 60 KLO cadres have been trained in the ULFA camps in Kalikhola, in neighbouring Bhutan.

Intelligence operatives point out that ULFA has a definite aim of setting up bases in the area in coming forward to help the KLO. ULFA activists have been using north Bengal as a transit point to go from Bhutan to Bangladesh and vice versa, while some militants have also crossed over to Nepal through this area. The ULFA militants often visit north Bengal for treatment. There are reports that the area was also used by ULFA militants to ship weapons to their camps in Bhutan.

The ULFA reportedly has hideouts, being maintained with the help of KLO militants.

The KLO has started taking a leaf out of the ULFA's training manual.

Like the ULFA in the late eighties, it has targeted tea gardens in north Bengal to amass a war chest. Security agencies are keeping a close watch on the KLO.

The banned National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), arguably the most powerful of insurgent groups in the north-east, also appears to be spreading its wings, senior police officials in north Bengal said.

They point out that two NSCN cadres were killed in a four-hour encounter with the Army in the Shamsingh forest in Darjeeling district on November 12.

Intelligence sources in Siliguri said that NSCN cadres were part of an instructors group that had travelled to Bengal to impart arms and explosives handling training to the Gorkha Liberation Organisation, a radical breakaway faction of the Subhash Ghisingh-led Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF).

The Gorkha Liberation Organisation, led by Chattre Subba has apparently decided to take up arms to fight for a separate Gorkha state, to be carved out of north Bengal. The NSCN instructors were reportedly running a camp for GLO cadres for a month. The NSCN, known as the IM faction after its main leaders Issac Chisi Swu and Th Muivah, is observing a cease-fire with the Centre.

The more than three year truce is however on the verge of breaking down with both sides accusing each other of treachery.

This is not the first time that the NSCN is imparting training to other smaller militant outfits. It has lent expertise to several other groups in the north-east. It takes up training assignments with a two-fold objective: earn money (it levies training charges on a per head basis) and extend its area of influence so that in emergencies they can be used as shelters.

The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxists believes that Union Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamul Congress is deliberately extending support to the KLO and GLO to use them in the forthcoming state assembly elections.

Bhattacharya, in fact, conveyed his party's fears to Prime Minister A B Vajpayee during his visit to New Delhi last week.

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