A jawan keeps guard at the venue of the CPM meeting in Lalgarh. (Amit Datta)

Lalgarh, Dec. 31: The CPM today sought to give Maoists a taste of their own medicine, urging cadres to set up village defence squads of the kind the rebels had formed to fight the Left party’s activists and police.

“Nijer elakate gram rakhhi bahini gore tulun… shob rokom akromon protirodh korun (set up defence squads in your areas… resist all types of attacks),” the CPM’s West Midnapore secretary, Dipak Sarkar, told a party rally in Lalgarh today.

Asked after the rally how the proposed defence squads would resist Maoist attacks, Sarkar said: “Don’t you know how we are resisting them now? It will be spontaneous resistance by the people.”

Sarkar suggested the idea after Sushanta Ghosh, the minister of state for paschimanchal development, urged him at the rally to “advise us how to protect areas (the CPM has recaptured from Maoists)”.

The CPM rally, at the Lalgarh Ramakrishna Vidyalaya grounds, was the first Left public meeting in the area in one and a half years. Cadres carrying red flags marched to the site from Lalgarh and neighbouring villages.

The Maoists had formed village defence squads comprising local youths and had given them arms training. They had allegedly been tasked with carrying out attacks on CPM cadres and the police. One such squad was involved in the Jnaneswari Express sabotage last year.

At today’s rally, Sarkar attacked Mamata Banerjee for “meddling in the law and order situation”.

Referring to Union home minister P. Chidambaram’s letters to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee mentioning the presence of armed cadres in Jungle Mahal, Sarkar said: “It is part of Trinamul’s election campaign. But it will not work in Bengal.”