Book of Integration Council New - Ministry of Home Affairs

dangerously in several parts of our country. I think this is the time for all of us have to
make a united efford to bring peace and amity to all sections, to all communities, to all
religious parties and to all castes in the nation. This is not the time to start blaming each
other or playing the blame game. This won’t help. I would like to now speak of recent,
the recent communal incidents, that have taken place in my State. My State, the people
of my State have a reputation for amity not for casteism, not for communalism, but for
civilization and tolerance. Most unfortunately two communal sets of incidents have
happened in the same district. There have been only two communal incidents in Orissa
in the eight and half years, while I have been Chief Minister. Both of them have taken
place in the same district of Kandhamal, which is one of the thirty districts in my State.
One incident took place last at the end of December last year and one as you all know
recently. The situation in that district is a complex one, for many decades there has
been friction and alienation between the tribals and the scheduled castes. There is a
feeling of mis-trust by the tribals about false certificates from which they think many of
the members of the Scheduled Castes and others get government jobs, also about
land grab etc. Now this distrust to each other took a communal turn after the night of
the 23 rd of August this year, when Swami Lakshamananand Saraswati was killed with
four of his followers. The Swami had worked and lived in that district for more than 40
years. So after that it took a communal turn and horrible acts of violence began after
that. My government strongly condemns all that violence and crime and we have been
taking stringent action. As soon as the violence began after that began the arrest of more
than one thousand people upto date and stringent action is being taken. These 1000
people contain individuals, persons belonging to groups and also persons belonging
to fundamentalist organizations. The crime branch is investigating these acts of violence,
our state crime branch, our state police crime branch also and from the
beginning, we have judicial inquiry under a retired High Court Judge of all these crimes
and incidents. Three persons have been cought by the crime branch regarding the
Swamiji’s murder and eight persons have been arrested regarding the shameful and
barbaric case of the rape of a Nun. All of us deeply condemn these acts of violence of
looting or burning dwellings of Minority community people or burning Churches and
prayer houses and in the last ten days atleast the situation is under control in Kandhamal
district and we have to look it all this in a bigger perspective to bring complete healing
and sense of trust amongst people. I have naturally been there, to the district after these
terrible events, these terrible incidents. I appointed very senior officer for the first time,
a senior officer has been made the special administrator of Kandhamal district. We
have announced a package which deals with seeing that the false certificates are not
issued, also that the land grabing issues sorted out, and obviously various packages for
development schemes and welfare programmes to improve the lot of very poor
people who have these differences for decades and the most of all this violence
Orissa has also suffered. The most serious floods that have ever been seen since
independence, where four million people, more than 4 million people, more than 40
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