HYDERABAD: The arrest of a senior Polit Bureau member of the CPI (Maoist), Sunil Roy alias Shome, and a Central Committee member of the party, Haldar (Tapas), in Kolkata, has thrown light on changing of names by top leaders of the party for tactical reasons.

Senior police officers of the State who have exchanged information with their West Bengal counterparts following the arrest are said to have gathered the new name of the party chief, Muppala Laxman Rao, as Chandrasekhar. He was till now popularly referred to as Ganapathi although he has two more aliases, Ramanna and Srinivas.

In fact, a press statement issued in his name here on Thursday to condemn the arrest of Shome continued to refer to him as Ganapathi. Rao is a native of Birpur village in Sarangapur mandal of Karimnagar district.

The arrest of Shome, who is considered one of the most prominent in the 13-member Polit Bureau of CPI (Maoist), has led the State police to gather more information about the outfit.

Sources said a Polit Bureau member from the State, Cherukuri Raj Kumar alias Madhav alias Gangadhar, changed his name to Madhu. It was also disclosed that the party had decided to set up State committees for Chhattisgarh and Orissa. The Maoists only had Dandakaranya and Andhra-Orissa Border (AOB) committees to look after the activities in the two States in the contiguous forest with Andhra Pradesh. They would continue to be there and in addition the two separate committees for the rest of the States would also come up. All of them will get the status of State committees. Apart from AOB, the North Telangana Special Zonal Committee and the Andhra State committee, headed by Ramakrishna, enjoy the status of State committees within Andhra Pradesh presently.

Sources also said that the Maoist set up had decided to establish regional bureaus to function as a link between the Central Committee and the State committees.

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