KATHMANDU: Chandra Prasad Khanal aka Baldev, spokesperson for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the Unified CPN-Maoist, today slammed top leaders of rival political parties saying that the latter attempted to portray the PLA members as criminals.

"If PLA members are criminals, then the top leaders such as Girija Prasad Koirala should executed and Madhav Nepal should be jailed for they too had led the revolutions in the country earlier," he said. He was speaking at a function organised here to announce the “unilateral release” of unfit PLA fighters from the UN-monitored cantonments by the PLA.

Baldev claimed that the PLA decided to release the 4,008 unfit combatants from the camps and cantonments due to the suggestion of the UCPN-Maoist as the government was not ready to help them as recommended by the PLA.

"We had put forth three proposals to the government: providing cash for their future with certain criteria to use it, purchasing land so that they can earn their living and investing in cooperatives to secure jobs for them," he said, adding that all those proposals were rejected. "Since all our proposals were rejected, we preferred releasing our fighters unilaterally so that we won't be blamed that we used Rs 800 million allocated for the unfit fighters," he maintained.

The government was planning to provide trainings to the unfit PLA fighters but without guaranteeing jobs. "Such trainings will be useless as they cannot compete with millions of people who have already received such trainings and waiting for jobs," he said.

The UNMIN will provide the outgoing PLA members a maximum of Rs 10,000 each as travel expense to reach their home.