A Kannada proverb goes thus: you realize the pain only when your eye is pierced.

The Andhra Pradesh government has suffered the import of this proverb (too) late in the day.

Ending a year-long truce with Naxalites which allowed them to recoup and rearm, the YSR Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh today reimposed the ban on the CPI (Maoist) and three front organisations in the wake of a spurt in extremist violence.

Pre-election trucking with the Naxals has extracted a price too steep from the Congress. Here’s the lowdown why YSR has clamped the ban with immediate effect.

In a major Naxalite strike, a senior ruling Congress legislator C Narsi Reddy and eight others were killed in Mahabubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh on Monday. The MLA was attacked by armed Maoists when he was inaugurating a school building near Narayanpet town, about 120 kms from Hyderabad, police said here. It is suspected that the attackers used AK-47 guns, police said, adding that according to eyewitnesses a group of four Naxalites participated in the strike. This is the first time that an MLA has become a victim of an ultras” attack after Congress came to power last year.

It must have hurt the Congress pretty bad, their Red friends killing a Congress MLA. However, this ban in all my wisdom will either not last long, or will lead to a fresh spurt of violence, or both.

As I’ve hammered repeatedly on this subject, there is an urgent need to contain these enemies within–verily, parallel governments–whose influence has spread to dangerous proportions.