Naxalism killed 12000 people in 20 years, says Rajnath Singh as he invokes 9/11, launches SAMADHAN doctrine
Home Minister Rajnath Singh today chaired a meeting to review the Naxalism situation in the country. He unveiled a new strategy to counter Maoism even as he noted that the violence has killed 12,000 people over two decades.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh today chaired a Left Wing Extremism (LWE) situation review meeting where he unveiled a new strategy to counter Naxalim in the country. The meeting came a fortnight after the Sukma attack, the deadliest Naxal strike on the CRPF in years, in which 25 jawans lost their lives.
Noting that Maoist violence has killed nearly 12,000 people have been killed in the last two decades, Rajnath said that choking the financial funding of Naxalites forms the foundation of the new strategy. (Notably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while announcing the demonetisation decision, had said that the note ban exercise would, among others, strike at Naxal funding.)
The new strategy also focuses on using advanced technology including drones and smart guns that feature triggers that get activated by bio-metrics.
At today's meeting, Singh launched a new security operations doctrine called 'SAMADHAN' - Smart leadership, Aggressive strategy, Motivation and Training, Actionable intelligence, Dashboard-based key performance indicators and key result areas, Harnessing technology, Action plan for each threat, No access to funding.
Rajnath also invoked the 9/11 attack in the United States, saying America took the incident as a challenge to ensure that no such incident happens in the future. The 9/11 commission had said it was not just an intelligence failure but imagination failure too, Rajnath said.
The LWE review meeting was attended by several chief ministers including Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh), Naveen Patnaik (Odisha), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Devendra Fadnavis (Maharashtra), Nitish Kumar (Bihar) and Raghubar Das (Jharkhand).
Notably, Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra Pradesh) and Kalvakuntla Chandrashekhar Rao (Telangana) were absent.
- I am confident that together, with the new strategy and full force, we will confront the Naxals and will be successful against them. I am sure that the attempts to stall development and throttle democracy at gun point will not be successful ever.
- Naxal problem can't be resolved through 'silver bullets' or through any shortcut, but through short-term, medium-term and long term solutions.
- Residential camps of security forces should be well equipped with power, water facility and better connectivity. There is need to depute shadow intelligence officers to track prominent targets associated with Left Wing Extremism (LWE).
- Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) would be pressed into service to bust their hideouts. All battalions should have UAV, GPS tracking, HHTI (hand-held thermal image) devices, radar, satellite imagery, trackers in weapons.
- Forces will be equipped with smart guns featuring triggers activated by bio-metrics. Analysis of attacks, intelligence from surrendered Naxals, inspiring leadership should be developed.
- Chhattisgarh lags in technical intelligence inputs and we must ensure that states take the ownership of LWE operations and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) actively cooperate with them.
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