-The Hindu   The Communist Party of India has protested against the decision of the Centre to support the Chhattisgarh government's move on the Salwa Judum, and urged it to withdraw support to the State government ordinance. The ordinance, which reappoints the Special Police Officers (SPO) “to do precisely the same activities and with the same qualifications as earlier, shows complete disrespect for the spirit of the Supreme Court judgment [declaring the Salwa...

Ardent admirers of the Supreme Court will credit it with starting three revolutions in the past three decades. In the 1980s the public interest litigation (PIL) movement opened the doors of the court to every citizen, especially those who could not reach it due to poverty, illiteracy or backwardness. Around the same time, the court sowed the seeds of citizens’ right to know in a few judgments, asserting that sunlight is...

A set of well-thumbed photographs are being passed around by protestors gathered outside the Sukma post office in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district. The first is passport-sized, of a well-built, thirty year old man called Madkami Massa in a pale blue shirt smiling into the camera, the other grainier image shows Mr. Massa's contorted corpse on a white slab – his right arm severed at the elbow, his chest pierced by a...

Ordinance makes SPOs an ‘auxiliary force' In the last week of July, the Chhattisgarh government passed an ordinance that sought to dispel the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the State's 5,269 registered Special Police Officers (SPOs) who operate as the vanguard of the government's battle against the guerilla army of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). On July 5, the Supreme Court directed the State government to “immediately cease and desist...

Villagers from Chikpal village in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district have blocked traffic to protest the killing of a prominent resident on Saturday August 6. In a complaint submitted to the Dantewada Superintendent of Police, Ankit Garg, villagers have accused the district police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) of killing the village ‘mukhiya’, Madkam Masse in a staged encounter last week. The police and CRPF have denied these accusations, claiming that Mr....