Author:
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: April 16, 2004
Alleging growing contradictions
and dishonesty in the movement, a high-ranking ideologue of the Outlawed
People's War (PW), Pilla Venkateshwar Rao alias Gautam, who carried a reward
of Rs 10 lakh on his head, surrendered to the police on Thursday.
Rao, a 46-year-old lecturer by profession,
was known as `master'. He handled political classes for the PW cadre across
the country and has been shaping them for the past two decades. He was
also the leader of the Central Committee of CPI-ML (PW) - Sub-Committee
on Political Education (SCOPE).
Speaking to reporters, Venkateswar
Rao said that he has decided to leave the organisation, with which he had
22 year association, as he was disillusioned with the functioning and policies
of PW's leadership.
"I have lost faith in the present
leadership due to political dishonesty, stifling and inherent contradictions.
The party has been continuously losing its mass base in Andhra Pradesh
and Madhya Pradesh right from 1999, while the focus has been only on militarisation
of cadre. In the given circumstances, I do not think the revolution will
ever succeed," Rao said.
A revolutionary party loses its
ideological, political and organisational base only when the degeneration
of leadership sets in. "Let the PW claim today that they have maintained
the party on Communist ideologies during the past two years," he said.
Declining to specify the issues
on which he differed with PW leadership, Rao, however, said that on the
issue of poll boycott, the organisation was adopting a "self contradictory
and politically dishonest" stand by targeting the TD-BJP combine while
allowing the other political parties to campaign.
