DC Edit | Finally, India Is Naxal-mukt Nation

India is finally a Naxal-mukt nation, Union home minister Amit Shah declared a day ahead of his deadline to eliminate Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) from the country. Of the 21 members in the Central Committee and Politburo of CPI (Maoist), security forces have neutralised 20 top leaders — one person was arrested, seven surrendered, and 12 have been killed. Only one Maoist leader was not caught, and he is still absconding. Talks are underway to prod him into surrendering.

In its heyday, the Red Corridor spread across Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Bengal, Kerala, parts of Karnataka, and districts of Uttar Pradesh. By 2025, its influence had shrunk to four districts in Chhattisgarh and one district each in Jharkhand and Maharashtra. Since then, the Narendra Modi government has brought 12 crore people from the former Red Corridor into the mainstream.

The Naxal movement suffered its worst setback on October 6, 2024, when security forces killed 31 Maoists in the forests of Abhujhmad and recovered 4,000 sq km of thick forest land, which is four times as large as Delhi and had not been surveyed by the government for decades.

The Narendra Modi-led BJP government has extensively used technology and surrendered Naxals to neutralise the Maoists. A subsequent operation by security forces at Karregutta on the Chhattisgarh-Telangana border sealed the fate of Maoism in India, leading to the surrender of hundreds of Maoists.

The communist insurgency started as an uprising by peasants in Naxalbari village in West Bengal, asserting their right to survive, in 1967. It peaked in the 1990s. However, the Maoist ideology faced its first serious setback during the Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy government in united Andhra Pradesh and was followed by other states later.

The two-pronged strategy adopted by the YSR government included welfare measures to wean away people’s support for the Naxal-Maoist insurgency and a ruthless crackdown against its cadre. The same strategy was followed by the Modi government, which runs several welfare schemes targeting the poor.

Despite their control over a vast territory for decades, where they ran a parallel administration, Maoist leaders could not fulfil the promised development. On the other hand, people living in areas outside the Red Corridor were enjoying state-run welfare programmes. This weakened the support base of Maoism, forcing the Left-Wing Extremists to rule people exclusively through force.

By 2024, the Maoist movement was on its last leg. Amit Shah adopted a no-nonsense approach and gave a free hand to security forces to eliminate the organisation. The security forces executed the plan with unprecedented intensity, which caused the Maoist organisation to implode.

Several Maoist leaders and cadres have either surrendered or gone into hiding. Unless the government keeps track of their movements, they could regroup at an opportune time and strike back. But the best way to prevent the re-emergence of Left-Wing Extremism in the country is for the government to put the welfare of the people at the top of its agenda.