Mamata Banerjee, KCR Skip Amit Shah’s Review Meeting on Naxal-Hit States

Two chief ministers, Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal and K Chandrashekhar Rao of Telangana, stayed away on Monday from a New Delhi meeting, presided over by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, to review operations against Naxals and development work in Maoist-affected areas.

Chief ministers or their representatives, along with senior police and civil officials from 10 states hit by Naxal violence, were expected at the meeting, the first of its kind since Shah took charge of the ministry about three months earlier.

Who stayed away

Banerjee, a sharp critic of the Narendra Modi-led government, sent West Bengal’s Director General of Police and Chief Secretary in her place. Rao was reported to be in Hyderabad on a personal visit.

The absence of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was more unexpected, since Gadchiroli, one of the main centres of the insurgency, was at the top of the agenda. Reports said Fadnavis was busy with his ‘Mahajanadesh Yatra’ to seek votes in the state, which is due to vote in a few months. The state police chief attended in his place as well.

The figures on Naxal violence

The 10 affected states are Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Home ministry data show:

• Cases of Naxal violence fell from 8,782 in 2009-13 to 4,969 in 2014-18, a drop of 43.4 per cent.
• Deaths, including security personnel, fell from 3,326 to 1,321 over the same periods, a drop of 60.4 per cent.
• From 2009 to 2018, 1,400 Naxals were killed.
• In the first five months of this year, 310 incidents were reported nationwide, in which 88 people died.

Last month, G Kishan Reddy, the junior minister in the home ministry, said violence linked to Left Wing Extremism (LWE) was confined to 60 districts in 2018, with just 10 of them accounting for two-thirds of it. He said incidents between April 2014 and May 2019 were 43 per cent lower than in the previous five years.

Government strategy

A National Policy and Action Plan on LWE, approved in 2015, combines security measures, development work and protection of the rights of local communities. The Centre also gives special assistance to the worst-affected districts, budgeted at Rs 1,000 crore a year, to plug gaps in public infrastructure and services.

See also: political leaders.

Originally published on 26 August 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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