Anti-Naxal strategy yielding results, menace will be eradicated by March 31, says Shah as he chairs LWE review meet in Chhattisgarh

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday (February 8, 2026) chaired a high-level security review meeting in Chhattisgarh’s capital Raipur on Left-Wing Extremism (LWE), the move coming weeks ahead of the Centre’s March 31 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 Secretary, Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Special Secretary (Internal Security) in the Ministry of Home Affairs, the official said.

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

Mr. Shah said that security-centric strategy, infrastructure development, and disruption of Maoist financial networks have yielded results in the fight against Left-Wing Extremism, asserting that the menace will be completely eradicated before March 31.

In a post on X, shared photographs of the meeting and said, “Today in Raipur, I held a review meeting with the Chhattisgarh government and officials on anti-Naxal operations. The security-centric strategy, infrastructure development, targeting of the Naxal financial network and the surrender policy have yielded positive results, and Naxalism will be completely eradicated before March 31,”.

Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, comprising seven districts, shares borders with Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Odisha, and has long been considered the strongest bastion of Maoists. However, the region has witnessed intensified anti-Maoist operations over the past few years, considerably weakening the extremist movement.

Since January 2024, more than 500 Maoists, including top cadres such as CPI (Maoist) general secretary Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju, have been killed in encounters in Chhattisgarh, while around 1,900 Maoists were arrested and over 2,500 surrendered during the same period in the State, as per police.