Maoist posters spotted in Mateli on eve of ID

EOI, Mateli, 14 August 2014: A red alert has been sounded at Mateli in the Dooars after some posters purportedly pasted by the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) appeared at various vantage areas giving a headache to the authorities ahead of  the 68th Independence Day.

The PLGA, popularly known as the People's Guerrilla Army, is the armed wing of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), a banned ultra-Left wing organisation that aims to erase the existing system of governance through a people's war.  

The posters are written in Hindi with red ink, and call for insurgency against the ruling class. They warn tea garden authorities and the ruling class of dire consequences if they do not stop exploitation and oppression of labourers.

Two of the posters spotted at Chulsa Tea Garden have put security forces on their toes. One of them gives a clarion call to the working class people to forcefully displace the ruling class responsible for exploiting them. The poster reads, “Majdoor ko lootne wala Sashak aur Shoshak barg ko mar bhagao.” (Obliterate the ruling class that exploits the working class people).

Meanwhile, the second poster demands at least a 30 per cent wage increment for tea garden workers with immediate effect. It condemns the tea garden owners as exploiters and accuses the garden managers of siphoning lakhs of rupees into their bank accounts. This poster too calls for an uprising against the existing authority and governing system.

Some local tea workers said such posters have been spotted at various places in the area over the past seven days. Mateli tea garden manager Bijay Singh Robert said the PLGA posters have been spotted in a number of places in the garden and the police have been informed about the matter.

Jalpaiguri district police superintendent Kunal Agarwal said the police have confiscated a numbers of posters from Mateli and an investigation has been started to find out those involved. The district police have sounded a red alert and security has beefed up to foil any attempt by the ultra-Left wing to spread violence on the eve of Independence Day. Surveillance has been increased across the district to track any potential organisational build-up of the Maoists.

Since inception, the Maoists had limited their activities within a marked territory of South Bengal, but the posters in Mateli have made security agencies to redraw the map of the activity zones of the banned ultra-Left organisation.