Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on Friday cancelled his visit to Araku valley, scheduled for Oct. 12, even as tribal groups made appeals to CPI (Maoist) naxalites to set free the three TDP men they abducted on Monday.
The three abducted men, TDP mandal unit president Mamidi Balayya Padal, senior leader Vandalam Balayya and district committee member Mukkala Mahesh, are all tribal leaders from Araku. They were abducted from their homes in a pressure tactic to force the State Government to stand down from its plans to mine bauxite in the Agency hills.
Mr. Naidu was to participate in programmes at a nearby village adopted by him and address a public meeting at Araku on Oct 12. It was officially announced that the cancellation was due to the chief minister’s preoccupation with plans for the Amaravati ceremony.
Mr Naidu will however, visit Visakhapatnam on Monday to participate in programmes to mark the anniversary of the cyclone Hudhud.
With reports emerging that the three men have been moved to Odisha, three members of the Girijan Employees Association, P. Balayya, Murla Venkata Ramana and Seva Raja Rao, undertook a mission to the went to the interstate border region to negotiate the release of the captives.
However, contact was apparently not made with the Maoists.
The three men’s families and some TDP and YSR Congress workers held a demonstration at Pedavalasa asking the Maoists to release them.
The Maoists have given the Government time up to October 13 to make a statement on bauxite mining.
Former minister P. Balaraju said the Government should come out with a statement to secure the captives’ release.
“Mr. Naidu has declared in the past that his party would not allow bauxite mining in the Agency area. He said so on the floor of the Assembly and in letters to the Centre and also in the party manifesto when he was the leader of the opposition,” Mr. Balaraju said.
At Andhra University, associate professor Jarra Appa Rao who was arrested some months ago on the charge of supplying explosives to the Maoists, and other Girijan teachers, employees, students and research scholars held a meeting and requested the Maoists to release the three tribal men on humanitarian grounds.
