Samyukt Kisan Morcha leader Darshan Pal’s links with CPI (Maoist) come to the fore

Ruchika M Khanna

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Chandigarh, January 10

Senior leader of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), who played a pivotal role during the year-long farmers’ protest in 2020-21, Darshan Pal’s links with Maoists have come to the fore after the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) announced its decision to expel him from the party.

The CPI (Maoist) has remained banned in India since 2009. In a statement, the spokesperson of the banned outfit, Abhay, has announced that Comrade Joseph (Darshan Pal) and Comrade Sanjeet (Arjun Prasad Singh) have been expelled from the party “by cancelling their party membership and removing them from all responsibilities due to their anti-party and factional activities after a decision regarding the same has been taken by the central committee of the party”.

The two leaders are believed to be close to Comrade Balraj, who was a member of the central committee of the CPI (Maoist) and was recently expelled from the party on charges of breach of discipline and ‘toeing a right wing opportunist line’.

The statement, a copy of which is with The Tribune, says that Comrade Joseph had joined CPI (ML) Party Unity in the 1980s and was a state committee member, Punjab. “Comrade Sanjeet also joined CPI (ML) Party Unity in the 1980s and became a Bihar state committee member. Later, when the CPI (Maoist) was formed, these two comrades joined it and had been working under the guidance of the central committee,” it says, establishing the long-standing membership of Darshan with the banned outfit.

Meanwhile, Darshan could not be contacted as his mobile phone was switched off.

The rise of Naxalism in the state has often been raised by the central agencies, even during the farmers’ agitation against the three farm laws. Even former Chief Ministers of the state Capt Amarinder Singh and Parkash Singh Badal had spoken about it.