Home Minister Amit Shah stressed on the need to deal with the Maoist problem with an iron hand.
Hyderabad: More cell phone towers, better roads and awarding public work contracts to local tribal people are some of the decisions taken at the highest level to tackle the Maoist problem in the heartland forest zones of Central India. Union Home Minister Amit Shah is expected to continue the policies of his predecessor Rajnath Singh on handling the extremist issue that confronts close to eight states.
While continuing the aggressive combating techniques of the Central paramilitary forces for the last five years, the government’s internal security strategy led by Shah would focus on certain nuanced improvements based on the experiences of the Centre and states in the last few years in the Maoist hit zones.
Shah chaired a meeting in Delhi on 26 August and it was attended by several chief ministers including those from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, while states like Telangana, Maharashtra and Bengal were represented by ministers and officials. Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla briefed on the Maoist problem in the forest areas of heartland of the country. According to officials who attended the meeting from Telangana, Shah stressed on the need to take stringent steps to tackle the Maoist problem as the government views it as a major internal security threat.
What marked the difference of the past governments led by UPA and the current NDA is their overall approach and tolerance levels to Maoists in jungles. While the previous governments adopted an “attack only after being attacked policy” the BJP government maintained consistency in attacking the Maoist armed squads, irrespective of attacks from their side, said a senior police official, preferring anonymity.
Shah, who gathered inputs from the Central paramilitary forces on their ground level problems while taking up combing operations in jungles, told the chief ministers to see that better roads and mobile networks were provided, as it is essential to hit the targets.
The CRPF which deploys close to 10,000 of its men in these areas finds it hard to navigate the mostly inaccessible forest areas.
The Home minister asked for more private mobile companies to set up their towers so that two issues can be addressed—one, better GPS navigation in interior areas, and two, more tele-density in these areas which would help the forces track the moments of the extremists with the help of locals.
Another crucial issue of cutting off the financial lifeline of Maoists figured at the conference and led to a decision that more local tribal people can be awarded contracts of government works. Currently, only works worth below Rs 5 lakh were allotted to locals on nomination basis, but from now on, this limit is increased to Rs 50 lakh, on a suggestion from the Union Home minister.
This involvement of local villagers in government works will not only lead to improvement in their quality, but will also deny Maoists the opportunity to collect funds from contractors and businessmen. There were intelligence reports that sometimes the contractors were offering funds to Maoists to shield their irregularities. Shah directed the officials to block such contractors.
Shah in his opening remarks pointed to a decline in the number of violent incidents in the Left wing extremist areas from 2,258 in 2009 to 805 in 2018. Similarly, the number of deaths for the same period had come down from 1,005 to 240. If the number of Maoist-dominated districts were 135 in 2009, the number came down to 96 in 2010 and 60 last year, Shah said.
While making it clear that PM Modi’s agenda for New India had no place for Maoists, Shah told the states to roll out their welfare schemes in these districts so that the local people would join hands with the forces to curb extremism.