Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai said Thursday that the Maoist movement was “breathing its last” in Bastar region while Home Minister Vijay Sharma appealed to the top leaders of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) leaders to join the mainstream, reiterating that the government was “ready for a discussion”. The remarks came a day after 27 Maoists – including its 70-year-old general secretary Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basava Raju, the chief of the party – were killed in a major encounter in Abujhmad.
Addressing a press conference in Raipur, Sai said Basava Raju had a cumulative bounty of Rs 3 crore — Rs 1 crore each from Chhattisgarh government and the Union Home Ministry, Rs 50 lakh from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Rs 25 lakh each from Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
“In three decades, this is the first time that a general secretary-rank person has been killed. It’s a huge success and a huge shock to the Naxal since it has broken their spine. With folded hands, I greet and appreciate the courage and bravery shown by our forces. We’re proud of them,” the CM said.
For years, the Maoist movement has made Chhattisgarh suffer, he said.
“The people of Bastar, including tribals, are being forced to live in an atmosphere of fear, violence and insecurity. The people there were deprived of basic facilities of health and education,” he said. “The Naxals have now been squeezed to small pockets, and the movement is breathing its last.”
Home Minister too spoke in the same vein. Without mentioning any names, he took a jibe at a group of people seeking a dialogue with the Maoists.
He was referring to an umbrella group of several tribal rights organisations who have been urging the government to have a dialogue with the Maoists. image.png
“I want to say this clearly… we will not have any discussions with those sitting in , who as individuals and as groups are giving instructions to the state and central governments on what to do. This is because they never shared the pain of Bastar people,” he said. “But if the Maoist wants to talk, then according to the chief minister’s directions, our government will have a discussion with them…there is no doubt about it.”
The government “does not want to fire a single bullet”, he reiterated. The government’s actions have led to “more surrenders and fewer arrests this year”, he claimed.
“Honourable ji has requested Maoists to join the mainstream. I think the time is right…all big Naxal leaders must understand…the government is 100 percent sure of bringing them to the mainstream. Take your life forward, serve society, end violence, let Indravati be a peaceful place, remove the Improvised Explosive Devices that you’ve put on the path to development,” Sharma claimed.
Additional Director General (Naxal operations) Vivekanand Sinha called the operation that led to Basava Raju’s death a “major success”. Security forces left for the operations on May 18, he said.
He further said: “In 1.5 years, we set up 15 police camps in Abujhmad. Now the security vacuum there has been brought down (from 5,000 sq km) to 3200 square km — mostly in the south and west of Orchha in Narayanpur. The forest here is so thick that even day looks like night. We are conducting operations here”.
Significantly, these remarks come at a time when the state is making a massive anti-insurgency push in an attempt to meet the March 26 deadline set by Union Home Minister Amit Shah to root out Left-Wing Extremism.
Meanwhile, police said that of the 27 Maoists killed in Wednesday’s encounter, 15 were male and 12 females. Their bodies have been identified, Inspector General of Police for Bastar Range Sundarraj P said in a press note issued late Thursday.
“Automatic weapons like three AK 47, four Self Loading Rifle (SLR), six INSAS rifles, a carbine were recovered among other weapons,” he said, adding that a cumulative bounty on those killed was Rs 5.84 crore.
According to the police, the major attacks planned under Basava Raju’s leadership include looting Koraput armoury in 2004, where 1,000 advanced guns and another 1,000 weapons were looted and at least three people killed, the 2005 jail break at Jehanabad, Bihar, where Maoists freed 389 prisoners after storming the place, and the 2013 Maoist attack at Jhiram Ghati in Sukma in which where 32 people, including the state Congress leaders, were killed. Also attributed to him is the 2018 murder of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MLA Kidari Sarveswara Rao in Andhra Pradesh.
