Santosh Rana

The first United Front government came to power in West Bengal in 1967 and in 1969 CPI(ML) heralded the launch of a new revolutionary party.

[3][4][5] Under his leadership, Debra, Gopiballavpur, Nayagram and Lodhasuli blocks of Midnapore district and adjoining areas in Bihar (now Jharkhand) and Orissa were 'virtually liberated'.

In an interview Santosh Rana said, "In the seventies, we began our work not in forest areas like Nayagram, Binpur or Lalgarh.

But mainly in densely populated Debra-Gopiballavpur along the bank of Subarnarekha river where class contradictions were sharp over land and wage questions.

That was a big blow for the landlords or jotdars and they failed to resist our move to grab ceiling-excess land and distribute it among the landless bargadars.

Despite our criticism of Charu Majumdar’s line of annihilation campaign, I must point out that he never asked us for indiscriminate killings like today’s Maoists.

But unlike the CPI(Maoist), we killed not a single tribal, Dalit and poor people in the seventies in Debra-Gopiballavpur.