CRPF’s new ‘Bastar Battalion’ being raised isn’t going to lead the anti-Naxal operations in Maoist heartland Bastar from the front when ready.
This is an indication over the fact that the Union Home Ministry now wants the Chhattisgarh Police to lead the operations with CRPF providing the necessary cover and enhanced fire power in anti-Naxal operations, it was learnt.
The development is corroborated by the statement of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in his May 8 meeting when he said : “We assure the States that we will continue to provide full support to them for their capacity building and training needs. Intelligence sharing and deployment of Central security forces will continue as per requirement. But the States must take initiative to conduct operations and use resources optimally”.
Notably, the final list of tribals selected from Sukma district for the newly raised Bastar Battalion of CRPF had been released in March this year.
It may be recalled that the recruitment process for all districts of insurgency infested Bastar region had been held earlier.
The newly being raised ‘Bastar Battalion’ by CRPF will have one-third women representation, officials informed.
Notably, the Bastar Battalion of CRPF is being raised by recruiting 744 Scheduled Tribe (ST) youths from four insurgency infested districts of Bastar in Chhattisgarh, the Central government has informed.
The districts from where the tribal youths would be recruited for the new Battalion are -- Bijapur, Dantewada, Narayanpur and Sukma.
The decision to set up a Tribal Battalion has been taken with a view to give more employment to the tribal youth keeping in mind their unique characteristics.
Earlier, the Union Cabinet under the Chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also approved raising of four 'India Reserve Battalions' (IR Bns) for Chhattisgarh State to be deployed in lWE pockets of the State.
The Union Cabinet had announced to raise a total of 17 India Reserve Battalions (IR Bns) for Jammu & Kashmir and left Wing Extremism (lWE) affected States, officials stated.
It includes five IR Bns in the State of J&K, three IR Bns in Jharkhand, three IR Bns in Odisha and two IR Bns in Maharashtra including four for Chhattisgarh.
Notably, Chhattisgarh stands fourth in the country in terms of the number of districts affected by left Wing Extremism (lWE).
A total of 106 districts in the country are considered as left Wing Extremism (lWE) affected. Of these, Bihar State has maximum 22 districts, followed by Jharkhand (21), Odisha(19), Chhattisgarh (16), Andhra Pradesh and Telangana,- both 8 each, West Bengal and Maharashtra,- both 4 each, Uttar Pradesh,- 3 and Madhya Pradesh, one.
Apart from the above, it is worth mentioning that the numbers of incidents of lWE violence and resultant deaths have although significantly declined during the last four years from 2011 to 2014, officials stated.
Maoist activities decreased in all the states except Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh with number of incidents rising to 42 per cent, observes the annual report of the Union Ministry of Home for 2015-16.
The report mentioned that the rise in incidents had been due to conduct of Panchayat polls in January-February month in 2015-16 in Chhattisgarh's Bastar region.
It further mentioned that the Dandakarnya region in South Chhattisgarh had been the nucleus of Maoist activities.
The Central government in June last year decided to also upgrade the government multi-specialty hospital at Jagdalpur in Bastar district of Chhattisgarh.
A decision to this effect was taken in a review meeting of the progress of work in left Wing Insurgency (lWE) states chaired by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi recently, officials informed.
Other issues such as installation of mobile towers in grey areas, increasing the reach of networks of DD and AIR, improvement in programmes, expansion of railway lines, banking & postal services were also discussed in detail.