New Delhi, Sep 26 (FN Bureau) Incidents of Left Wing Extremism have come down by 23 per cent, the number of deaths have come down by 21 per cent, Home Minister Amit Shah today at a meeting with Chief Ministers and officials of the affected states, The meeting, held in the national capital, was attended by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Telangana Chief Minister K.C. Rao, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren. Officials from West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala also attended the meeting. “In decades of fighting, we have reached a point where the death toll is less than 200 for the first time and this is a huge achievement for all of us.
We all know that unless we get rid of the problem of Left Wing Extremism completely, the full development of the country and the states affected by it is not possible,” he said. The Minister said those who want to give up arms and join mainstream are heartily welcome, but those who take up arms and hurt innocent people and the police, will be given the same response. “The root cause of dissatisfaction is that development has not reached there in last six decades since Independence and now to deal with it, it is very essential to ensure accessibility to fast-paced development so that common and innocent people do not join them,” he said. He asked the Chief Secretaries of the affected states to hold review meetings with the DGPs and officers of central agencies at least every three months and said over last two years, a huge and successful effort has been made to increase security camps in areas where security was not stringent, especially in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Odisha. “The fight against the problem, which has claimed the lives of more than 16,000 civilians in the last 40 years, has now reached its end and it needs to be accelerated and made decisive,” he said. He highlighted that in the North East, over 16,000 insurgents have joined the mainstream of the society.
He also asserted that the state administration should be proactive and move ahead in coordination with the central forces, and said it is important to neutralize the sources of income of the Left Wing Extremists. According to Home Ministry figures, over the last decade, there has been a consistent decline both in the violence figures and geographical spread of Left Wing Extreamism. The incidents of LWE violence has come down by 70 per cent from an all time high of 2258 in 2009 to 665 in 2020. The resultant deaths of has also come down by 82 per cent from an all time high of 1005 in 2010 to 183 in 2020. The area under Maoist’s influence was also constricted with the geographical spread shrunk from 96 districts in 2010 to just 53 in 2020. They have been pushed to a few pockets with only 25 districts accounting for 85 per cent of the LWE violence in the country.