Hyderabad, July 20: Efforts by the Andhra Pradesh government to broker peace with the People’s War Group should receive a big boost when the 12-year ban on the outlawed group lapses tomorrow.

The PWG and its six subsidiaries were banned on June 21, 1992, by the Congress government of chief minister . Janardhan Reddy. The ordinance was suspended for two-and-a-half years after .T. Rama Rao returned to power in 1994. The ban was reimposed by . Chandrababu Naidu after the 1996 Lok Sabha elections.

The ban lapse is aimed at providing democratic space for the militants who have stepped forth to hold talks with the Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy government and end the three-decade-long rural violence in the state.

Andhra home minister K. Jana Reddy indicated as much today after a third round of talks with the two PWG emissaries, Vara Vara Rao and Gaddar.

The duo has been nominated to set the modalities for talks between the outfit’s top brass and the government.

Jana Reddy said representatives of eight human rights forums and the Andhra Pradesh Union of Working Journalists will be nominated on the monitoring committee which will supervise the implementation of the ceasefire.

The home minister said Rajasekhar Reddy will make a statement in the Assembly on the lifting of the ban and the peace process.

The ceasefire envisages no encounter killings and no attempt by police to search for the extremists in forests. Unarmed Naxalites will be free to visit villages and hold meetings and police are to remove all camps and outposts in forests and sensitive, remote villages. Police are also required to stop infiltrating dalams with their informants.

There has been just one instance of rural violence over the last two months: a “covert (police mole)” in the Naxalite dalams in Warangal district killed two activists and seriously injured three others before fleeing with their guns. The Reddy government has also laid bare the police’s modus operandi of floating anti-Naxalite forums that would threaten the rebels.