2 Chhattisgarh districts to shed Maoist tag

NEW DELHI: When Chhattisgarh chief minister Vishnu Deo Sai met Union home minister Amit Shah last week, he had more than an invitation for the closing ceremony of Bastar Olympics.

- Prawesh Lama

Sai told the home minister, according to top government officials, that two out of the seven districts in the Maoist-infested Bastar division—the Bastar district that houses the district headquarters of Jagdalpur, and Kondagaon, which houses headquarters of the Kondagaon district—are finally free from the scourge of Left-wing extremism, roughly five decades after they were first put on the infamous list.

The chief minister told Shah that all underground and overground workers have either surrendered, been killed over the years, or fled from their hideouts in the two districts, the officials quoted above said. At least two senior government officials further said that the Centre would remove Bastar and Kondagaon from the LWE-affected districts list this month. Once an area is declared Maoist free, it is only a matter of time that it is removed from LWE list, the officials said.

The Bastar division is often considered the nerve centre of the Maoist insurgency in India. It comprises seven districts—Bastar, Dantewada, Bijapur, Kanker, Narayanpur, Kondagaon, and Sukma—of which Narayanpur houses Abujhmaad, a vast expanse of uncharted forest that serves as a hideout and training centre for the extremists.

But over the last 12 months, the Centre embarked on a fierce offensive against the Maoists, constructing roads and setting up camps in districts and areas that were once plagued by LWE, and gunning down at least 217 insurgents in encounters—as part of its goal to eliminate Maoism by March 2026.

Sai's comment to Shah marks the first time that authorities have made inroads in a region that has long been considered synonymous with Maoist violence.