Bastar candidates afraid to campaign despite security

Dantewada: More than 65,000 security personnel have been deployed in the Maoist insurgency-hit Bastar region ahead of the Chhattisgarh polls starting Friday, but politicians still lack the courage to campaign in its interiors.

Bastar has 12 seats - 11 of them reserved for scheduled tribes - that are going to vote Friday in the state's first phase of assembly polls in 39 constituencies but there is almost no electioneering in places where rebels have been running a de facto administration since the 1980s.

The region has so far witnessed about 1,100 killings.

Even Mahendra Karma, the leader of opposition and the lone leader in the state who has Z-plus security because of the Maoist threat, is not hitting the interiors.

Karma who is contesting from the Dantewada seat for the Congress and hoping to win it for the third time said: "No need to take a life risk. I am visiting only the safer areas and with sufficient security arrangements. I know they (Maoists) are on the prowl."

The banned Communist Party of India-Maoist has announced it will target leaders defying their diktat of boycotting the polls.

Rebels showed their intent October 20, the first day of filing nominations, by killing 12 Central Reserve Police Force men in Bijapur and November 9 when they killed two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, including the Dantewada district's party vice president, when they were on the campaign trail.