[During electoral campaigns in India, candidates and parties often post publicity posters (“flex signs”) — a method which Maoists have apparently also adopted to promote their revolutionary program and slogans, to the distress of State police and their electoral masters and bourgeois media. — Frontlines ed.]
Suspected Maoists put up flex boards in Attappady, Kerala
K. A. SHAJI, The Hindu, PALAKKAD, October 5, 2014
Electioneering on flex boards. Pictures of the Maoist advocate’s posters are not published in the Indian bourgeois press.
The police have stepped up vigil in Attappady region following the appearance of flex boards allegedly installed by the banned Maoist outfit to exhort the working class to prepare for an ‘armed battle’ against ‘ruling elites.’
While most of the flex boards were seen in Kallamala region of western Attappady on Friday morning, a few were installed at Poonchola and Pambbanthode villages close to Mannarkkad. The boards claimed their ownership to a special regional committee of the CPI(Maoist) Western Ghats unit.
The boards said the organisation was observing the 10th anniversary of its armed resistance and sought cooperation of the general public in strengthening the party base in the three southern States. It wanted strong public vigilance against concerted efforts of the ruling class to plunder water, land, forests, and natural resources.
A few notices and stickers were found pasted on the walls in the locality. At Kallamala, a few handouts on armed revolution were found in the bazaar as if left behind by Maoist cadres to attract the local community. Some of the banners erected by the CPI(M) for the by-election to the Attappady block panchayat were found removed by the alleged outfit. The police suspected that the Maoists might have reached the spot by travelling through Onthamala forests bordering the Silent Valley National Park. ‘‘Thunderbolt, the special squad formed to check Maoist menace, has started an investigation. People in the region have been asked to remain vigilant against any possible operations by the Maoists,’’ said a senior police officer.
Meanwhile, the police were also not ruling out the possibility of creating a Maoist scare by certain vested interests to make gains in the by-election to the local body. Investigation in that regard was also on, the officer said.
Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle 