Shah chairs LWE review meet in Chhattisgarh: Union Home Secretary, IB chief among those present

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday chaired a high-level security review meeting on Left Extremism (LWE) in Chhattisgarh’s capital Raipur; This move will come weeks before the March 31 deadline, which is the Centre’s deadline to eliminate the Maoist insurgency from the country.

The meeting held at a hotel in Nava Raipur Atal Nagar was attended by Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai, Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Sharma, Union Home Minister, Director of Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Special Secretary (Home Security) in the Ministry of Home Affairs, the official said.

Directors general of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and National Investigation Agency (NIA), along with several senior officers from Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Telangana were also present, he added.

Chhattisgarh’s seven-district Bastar region shares borders with Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha and has long been considered the Maoists’ strongest stronghold. However, the region has witnessed an intensification of anti-Maoist operations in the last few years, which has significantly weakened the extremist movement.

Since January 2024, according to the police, more than 500 Maoists, including senior cadres like CPI (Maoist) general secretary Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju, have been killed in clashes in Chhattisgarh, while around 1,900 Maoists have been arrested and over 2,500 surrendered in the state during the same period.