In the central action against the Naxalites, a plan was drawn up to stop the funding and take drastic action

New delhi date. 3

A high-level meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah was held on Sunday to discuss two key issues, such as intensifying the campaign against the Naxals and curbing the flow of funds to them. The meeting was attended by six chief ministers and top officials of four other states. In the country, from 2014 to 2020, the number of affected districts had come down to six.

The meeting, which lasted for about three hours, discussed important issues such as action against top Maoist organizations, addressing security shortcomings, concrete action by the Enforcement Directorate, the National Investigation Agency and the state police. Official sources said that Naveen Patnaik of Odisha, K. of Telangana were among the chief ministers who attended the meeting. Chandrasekhar Rao, Nitish Kumar of Bihar, Shivraj Singh Chauhan of Madhya Pradesh, Uddhav Thackeray of Maharashtra and Hemant Soren of Jharkhand.

The meeting was attended by the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Bhupesh Baghel of Chhattisgarh, KYS of Andhra Pradesh. Jaganmohan Reddy and Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijay did not participate. He was replaced by senior officials from these states.

According to sources, in addition to concrete action against the Naxals, coordination among the states, capacity building of state intelligence branches and special teams of the states, construction of strong police stations were also discussed. The Home Minister reviewed the security situation with the Chief Ministers and officials and the ongoing operations against the Maoists and ongoing projects in the Naxal-affected areas. Shah reviewed the needs of the states, the number of forces deployed to counter the extremists, development works like construction of roads, bridges, schools and health centers in the Naxal-affected areas.

Issues discussed at the meeting included speeding up road construction, upgrading mobile towers in Naxal-affected areas over the past five years to improve the telecom network and installing more mobile towers. According to the Union Home Ministry, there has been a sharp decline in Maoist violence in the country. At present, the dominance of the Maoists has been reduced from 20 districts to six districts. Between 2015 and 2020, 20 security personnel, 1,000 civilians and 200 Naxalites were killed in various acts of violence in the left-wing extremist areas. According to statistics, a total of 2,500 Naxalites surrendered during this period.