RAIPUR: Chhattisgarh deputy chief minister and home minister
Vijay Sharma
on Wednesday said that the state is making efforts to bring new features and better implementation in maintaining the
victims register
for the people victimized due to violence in
Bastar
.
Minister Vijay Sharma said that as part of the campaign against violence and elimination of Maoists from Bastar, maintaining the victims register is one of the major targets besides encounters, rehabilitation of surrendered Maoists and development of the region.
This register is about maintaining details of the LWE victims, their families and facilities being given to them, Sharma said, adding that funds for the same are also being accepted for victims’ rehabilitation and to provide them better facilities.
Victims register is an experiment which has been tried in more than a dozen countries as a conflict resolution or peacebuilding effort.
Shubhranshu Choudhary who has advocated for a victims register in the past said that maintaining the victims register proved successful in dealing with the Left Wing extremism problem in Colombia from where we first heard about it.
“I was once told that as per the calculation, around 70% victims in Narayanpur were not on the victims list of the government because the victim families could not provide papers needed for the registration under IPC. Govt was mulling over introducing special law to be enacted so that these victims can be added to the list,” Choudhary said.
He explained that the victims register experiment does not differentiate between the victims. “They can be victims of Maoists, state, vigilantes or can be displaced outside or inside the state, surrendered people, families of slain Maoists etc. As per the rules of the victims register experiment, the victims and their families need to be given a benefit of doubt when they tell their stories, as many versions cannot be cross checked. All victims are expected to be compensated monetarily or by other facilities like land, jobs, schooling, health support etc,” Choudhary said.
He added that presently, the govt only registers part of Maoist victims, which needs to be expanded to all types of victims of conflict. As per the estimates, around 55,000 people of Bastar are still in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana who ran away from Chhattisgarh to escape the violence after the beginning of Salwa Judum movement in 2005.
English (US) ·