As many as 836 LWE cadres have been arrested and 1,639 have surrendered and joined the mainstream.
Credit: PTI
Nearly six months before the March 31, 2026 deadline to make India free from Naxalism, the Centre on Wednesday said that the number of most Naxalite-affected districts has been brought down to just three.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said now only Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh remain in the most-affected category.
In the category of Left Wing Extremism-affected districts, the number has also been further brought down to just 11, including the three most affected districts, from 18. These districts are spread in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Telangana.
According to the MHA 126 districts across India reported naxal-related violence in 2013 but by March this year, this tally had fallen to just 18 districts, with only six classified as most affected districts.’
"In a giant stride towards Modi government’s vision of building a Naxal-free Bharat, the number of districts most affected by Naxalism have been brought down to three from six," an MHA statement said.
Besides the three most-affected naxal districts, the other naxal-affected districts are Dantewada, Gariyaband Kanker and Mohalla-Manpur-Ambagar Chowki (Chhattisgarh), West Singhbhum (Jharkhand), Balaghat (Madhya Pradesh), Gadchiroli (Maharashtra) and Kandhamal (Odisha).
The Modi government is committed to completely eradicate the Naxal menace by March 31 next year.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and guidance of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the operational successes have surpassed all previous records this year wherein 312 LWE cadres have been eliminated, including CPI (Maoist) General Secretary and eight other Polit Bureau/ Central Committee Members, the statement said.
As many as 836 LWE cadres have been arrested and 1639 have surrendered and joined the mainstream.
The surrendered Naxalites include one Polit Bureau Member and a Central Committee Member, the government said.
“In the category of LWE affected districts the number has also been further brought down to just 11 from 18. Now only 11 districts are Left Wing Extremism affected. The Modi government is committed to completely eradicate the Naxal menace by the 31st of March 2026,” a press statement said.
The National Action Plan and Policy include precise intelligence-based and people friendly counter Left Wing Extremism operations.
These steps were accompanied by swift domination of areas with security vacuum, targeting of top leaders as well as over ground workers, countering the nefarious ideology, rapid development of infrastructure and saturation of welfare schemes, choking of finances, enhanced coordination between states and centre governments and accelerated investigation and prosecution of Maoist related cases, it said.
"Once called India’s 'biggest internal security challenge' by the then Prime Minister in 2010, naxalism is now visibly retreating. Naxals had planned a Red Corridor -- stretching from Pashupati in Nepal to Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh," it said.