New Delhi, August 09 2010: India's 'gravest internal security threat' is methodically expanding its spheres of influence into the traditionally unstable regions of the country's troubled Northeast, latest analysis reports of the South Asian Intelligence Review published today said.

The analysis said that the Communist Party of India � Maoist (CPI-Maoist), under a strategy to rope in sub-national armed groupings in the country's 'periphery', is widening its campaign for a pan-Indian consolidation of violent anti-state movements.

As the locus of India's earliest and multiple insurrections, most of which are now degraded, the Northeast frontier constitutes a strategic space for Left Wing Extremist (LWE) expansion.

At the first 'Unity Congress' after its formation in September 2004, the CPI-Maoist declared its sympathy and support to insurgencies by 'various nationalities', including those in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) , Assam, Manipur and Nagaland, declaring: "This Congress reaffirms its whole-hearted support to all these nationality movements and their right to self-determination, including the right to secession." The Unity Congress "unequivocally" supported the "right of self-determination of all the oppressed nationalities, including their right to secede from the autocratic Indian State." Indicating an intention to form closer alliances with various insurgent groups, the Congress noted, further, "it may be necessary to form a separate organization to take up the nationality issue, and we should form such organizations in accordance with the concrete situation," it says.

In a circular issued in May 2010, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) confirmed the LWE's unfolding plans to reach out to other terrorist and separatist groups in the country, including the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in Assam and the Hurriyat Conference in J&K.An unnamed official clarified, "Though the intelligence inputs don't suggest any strategic alliance, but Maoists have started corresponding with them".

The CPI-Maoist's Eastern Regional Bureau (ERB) has been entrusted with the task of establishing a foothold in the Northeast.

The ERB had initially been entrusted with the responsibility of launching operations in the States of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and parts of Orissa.

However, security sources indicated in June 2010, that the ERB had been given the additional responsibility of the Northeast region, the analysis of the review group said.

The Bureau is headed by Prashanta Bose alias Kishan da, originally from West Bengal, but currently and principally operating out of Jharkhand.

While sources refused to identify him, the ERB also has one known member from Assam, drawn from an area bordering West Bengal.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, on April 12, 2010, admitted that there were linkages between insurgent groups like ULFA and the CPI-Maoist, stating: There are reports about links between our insurgent outfits and Maoists.

There is a probable link.

I don't find much of a difference between them if you look at their respective ideologies and styles of functioning.

Both start off by exploiting sentiments of the masses in underdeveloped areas and try to solve problems through armed struggle.

The whole idea is to destabilise the Government.

Sources in the Defence establishment disclosed that "over-ground Maoist activists" have already set up base in three Districts in Assam: Goalpara in the West and Dibrugarh and Tinsukia in the East.

The Maoists had already inked a three-point pact with the Manipur-based armed group, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), on October 21, 2008, and issued a joint declaration after a two day meeting between the Revolutionary People's Front (RPF, the political wing of the PLA) and the CPI-Maoist, at the 'Council Headquarters' of the former at an unspecified location in Manipur, on October 21 & 22, 2008 .

According to the three point pact, both the groups had declared they would:
* Honour and support the sovereignty of the two 'countries' (the sovereignty of India and the sovereignty of Manipur);
* Extend full moral and political support to each other in the liberation struggles to overthrow the common enemy, 'the Indian reactionary and oppressive regime'
* Recognise and honour the historically endorsed territorial integrity of the two 'countries', namely Manipur and India.

The pact has given the Maoists the initial logistics support it needed in the Northeast, and subsequent indications suggest that this has been well exploited to secure wider alliance and a deeper presence in the region, it added.

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