New Delhi, Oct. 30: The Centre today offered to include issues like land acquisition, forest rights and development in the talks it has proposed to Naxalites in a strategy shift.

Home minister P. Chidambaram said: “The CPI (Maoist) should halt violence and the central government would persuade the state governments to talk to them on all matters, including their concerns on land acquisition, forest rights, industrialisation and development.”

He told reporters during the monthly presentation of his ministry’s report card: “I regret to say that the response so far has been disappointing.”

The Naxalites have been conducting their armed struggle for tribal rights in forests, putting a stop to what they call indiscriminate mining and rewriting development policy.

Till now, the Centre has mostly talked of an armed offensive against them, for which the home minister has come under criticism from within the government as well.

Today, Chidambaram made an appeal for a ceasefire, almost making eye contact with the Naxalites through television cameras. “If you sincerely espouse the rights of the poor…if they (Naxalites) are seriously champions of the poor, then they should talk to the state governments.”

The home minister said he wanted the Naxalites to “halt the violence” and wondered why his “simple three words” were being subjected to “tortuous” analysis and interpretation in television studios. Chidambaram had earlier repeatedly used “abjure violence”, suggesting “giving up” violence or laying down arms, though he has said he never expects the Maoists to do so because of their declared policy of “armed liberation struggle”.

Chidambaram, choosing his words carefully, referred to the Indian “state” as a federation of units with a centre instead of relegating law and order responsibility to states while appealing for an end to Naxalite violence. “The state — the central government and the state governments — have a duty to end the violence.”

Offering more reasons to open talks, Chidambaram said vigilante groups like Salwa Judum were not in action any more. “After we said that the Centre is not in favour of non-state actors being armed, the Salwa Judum has come to an end.”

Salwa Judum, which began in Chhattisgarh with Congress MLA Mahendra Karma at its forefront, soon attracted flak from Left-wing intellectuals and human rights groups as it resulted in massive displacement of people who took shelter in state-run refugee camps.

The home minister continued to berate the Marxists in Bengal. “The CPM had a very different view of the Maoists. They thought the Naxalites were comrades-in-arms fighting bourgeois parties like the Congress,” he said, dripping with sarcasm. “It is a late wake-up but they have woken up now (after) years of wrongly estimating the character of the CPI (Maoist).”