As the Maoists are killing more and more innocent civilians, the State Government seems worried over the development and has decided to urge the Centre to provide two more battalions of Central armed forces and two more choppers to tackle the menace.
According to reports, Chief Secretary GC Pati chaired a Unified Command Meeting here on Friday to take stock of the situation of Maoist violence. It came to be known that mostly villagers are being targeted by the Red ultras who usually term these harmless people as police informers and mercilessly kill them due to their strong opposition towards the extremists.
During 2014, at least 20 civilian deaths have occurred till date. Malkangiri district tops the list with 13 followed by six in Koraput and one in Rayagada. The Chief Secretary has sought empowerment of the forces with latest gadgets and act fast on intelligence inputs on the ultras received from various agencies. Secondly, he has asked officials to scale up the development process in these Red corridors so that people receive the fruits of development schemes.
It has been decided that crucial roads and bridges would be constructed at a total cost of over Rs 1,000 crore in these areas, said sources. Development Commissioner UN Behera, DGP Sanjeev Marik, Home Secretary CJ Venugopal, Intelligence Director Sunil Ray, Intelligence IG Arun Sarangi and Operations IG Saumendra Priyadarshi were present at the meeting.
For the security forces, 2014 has, however, been found to be a better year as there was no killing of Jawans or policemen while six Maoists have been neutralised during the period. In fact, the Maoists have changed their strategy as they are not confronting the security forces, it was observed.
Under the surrender policy, 91 Maoists have given up arms with Koraput topping the list with 53 followed by Rourkela with 28. Recovery of arms topped all records as 140 guns have been recovered from these ultras. For more successful operations, it was felt, Odisha needs more forces as the deployment in neighbouring Chhattisgarh is very high. This is because the ultras are moving out of Chhattisgarh and trying their foothold in Kalahandi, Nuapada and Boudh districts in Odisha, said sources.