At a review meeting of Chattisgarh’s Left Wing Extremism (LWE) situation held in Raipur on Sunday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah emphasised the need to free the affected pockets of the State within the next three years.
Those who attended the meeting included Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai, his two Deputies Arun Sao and Vijay Sharma, as well as senior officials, including the Union Home Secretary, Director (Intelligence Bureau), and Chief Secretary of Chhattisgarh. The heads of the Central Reserve Police Force and Chhattisgarh Police were also present at the meeting.
Highlighting that the problem was confined only to certain pockets of Chhattisgarh, Mr. Shah stressed the need for a detailed road map to be drawn up by all the concerned stakeholders, particularly relating to the targeting of the entire ecosystem sustaining LWE. Last year, Mr. Shah had said that the Centre was working towards eliminating the Maoist problem by 2024.
“The Union Home Minister directed the State Police to fill up the remnant security gaps, ensure comprehensive investigations, closely monitor prosecution, choke finance streams and continue intelligence-led operations. He also stressed the need to review all inputs shared through the Multi-Agency Centre and operationalise verified inputs,” a statement issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) noted.
At the meeting, Mr. Shah also emphasised better implementation of Central and State government schemes in the Naxal-affected districts and “utilisation of security force camps to ensure the benefits of these schemes [reach] villages in proximate areas”. He mentioned that the MHA should be flexible both in the allotment of funds and their usage in LWE-affected districts of Chhattisgarh.
Notably, in the past couple of months, the number of anti-Naxal operations have been on the rise in Bastar and other LWE-affected areas of the State. On Saturday too, the police gunned down three Maoists in Bijapur. Three days before that, the security forces announced that they had destroyed Naxal camps and weapon manufacturing units on the Chhattisgarh-Maharashtra border in an operation sustained over several days.
