Bhattacharjee at the rally. (Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya)

Nov. 22: Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today said his government wouldn’t compromise in any way with the Maoists and dubbed them “cowards’’ who hide in forests and plot murders.

“These Maoists are a bunch of cowards. They stay in the jungles of Jharkhand during the day and come out in the night to kill people. They are not even sparing ambulances. A doctor and a nurse were recently killed in a landmine blast triggered by the Maoists in West Midnapore. But we wouldn’t compromise with them. I have asked the administration not to have any dialogue with the Maoists. I want to see how far they can go,” he told a rally in South 24-Parganas’ Baruipur, 35km from Calcutta.

On November 2, a landmine had missed the chief minister by minutes and hit Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s convoy in West Midnapore.

Protesting the arrests and detentions that followed, tribals egged on by Maoists have laid siege to Lalgarh in West Midnapore. Bhattacharjee said: “It is unfortunate that these killers call themselves Maoists. Had Mao (Ze Dong) been alive, he would have hung his head in shame at his name being used in this manner.”

“A party,” he added, “wants the three districts (West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura) to be in Jharkhand.”

Bhattacharjee did not name anyone but Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Shibu Soren had urged the Centre before the July 22 trust vote in Parliament that the three Bengal districts be merged with Jharkhand. Soren is now the Jharkhand chief minister.

Bhattacharjee said Maoists would not be able to drag the tribals of Bengal into their fold because “we had supported them on the issue of land rights and minimum wages”.

However, after a Left Front meeting today, the allies blamed the CPM-led government, and not Maoists, for the Lalgarh trouble. Forward Bloc secretary Ashok Ghosh said: “The tribal agitation has nothing to do with Maoists. It is the expression of their anger resulting from prolonged neglect and deprivation.”

The CPI’s Nandagopal Bhattacharya said the “government’s apathy” towards the tribals had led to the agitation.

At the meeting, the allies resolved to tackle the Maoists “politically”. Front chairman Biman Bose said the government had been asked to expedite development work in the tribal areas.

The chief minister told the meeting the government was mulling a development package for the tribals.