The Warring States of India: Andhra Pradesh Versus Tamil Nadu

NEW DELHI: The gunning down of 20 alleged sandalwood smugglers by the Andhra Pradesh police has created a huge political crisis, as most of the dead were from neighbouring Tamil Nadu. The issue that is fast snowballing into a controversy had the Tamil parties call for a judicial enquiry even as MDMK chief Vaiko spoke for all saying in Chennai, "While police have every right to arrest and prosecute offenders, shooting them dead like birds is unacceptable."

In Andhra Pradesh the police claimed they had fired in “self defence.” Deputy Inspector General M Kantha Rao claimed the cops were attacked in the thick Chittoor forests with stones, axes and knives. However, nine alleged smugglers were killed at one point and the eleven others in a second encounter a kilometre away.

VS Krishna, general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Human Rights Forum, said that many such incidents of violence were against poor migrant workers from Tamil Nadu. He was quoted in the media as saying that in an earlier attack described by the Andhra police as a gunbattle had turned out to be "one-sided firing" by police.

Red sanders is endangered, and declared as such, with just one tonne of this rare variety fetching Rs two crores in the global market. Smuggling is rampant and Andhra chief minister Chandrababu Naidu in the Lok Sabha campaign had promised to bring in tough measures to check the smuggling.

The large scale killing has, however, rung alarm bells in both states with the Tamil Nadu opposition parties now up in arms. Local politicians feel that the controversy will deepen as it follows the inability of both states to resolve longstanding differences on a variety of issues, the most difficult being the sharing of the Krishna waters. In fact the year began with Tamil Nadu demanding the immediate release of 8.716 TMC of Krishna water to meet the drinking water needs of Chennai city. Tamil Nadu chief secretary K.Gnanadesikan met his Andhra counterpart IYR Krishna Rao on this issue that has been rankling the states for a long while. Despite promises, and central intervention in the form of advice, the waters issue continues to create tensions between the two states.

In scenes almost out of a movie last April 3000 fishermen from Andhra Pradesh landed in Tamil Nadu villages to brutally attack the fishermen in this Tiruvallur district, just 90 km north of Chennai. Houses and fishing boats were burnt. Senior Tamil Nadu officers were injured seriously.

Local Tamil fishermen had got to know of the attack, a retaliation to an earlier beating up of a few Andhra fishermen by them. Most of them had fled their villages although a strong posse of policemen had been posted there by the Tamil Nadu government for their security. However, the police collapsed under the ferocity of the attack by the Andhra fishermen who came in 400 boats. Skirmishes have been common between the fisherme n of the two neighbouring states, with the attack last year more organised than many. Media reports spoke of fear and trauma amongst the Tamil Nadu villagers, and the police inability to control the violence until additional forces were brought in.

Bitterness thus mars relations between the two state governments, with little serious effort to resolve the issues that periodically create a crisis.