Four months on, naxal-hit states yet to have unified commands

Sources said the Defence Ministry had furnished a list of retired Major Generals to the Home Ministry which has forwarded it to Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal.
The states are, however, yet to take any action on this, they said citing this as the reason for delay in establishing the Unified Commands for effectively fighting naxalism.
The decision to set up the Unified Commands in these four states was reached at the Chief Ministers' Conference held here on July 14.

According to the decision, the state governments were to appoint an IG as IG (anti-naxal operations) for that state and an IG CRPF was to be appointed as IG (Operations) for that State to work in close coordination with the IG (anti-naxal operations) of that State.

The Home Ministry had earlier asked for serving Major Generals but the Army was willing to provide only Colonel or Brigadier-rank officers with experience of commanding formations in counter-insurgency operations to provide advise in anti-naxal operations.

Later on, the proposal was changed and the Home Ministry had sought the names of retired Maj Generals for the task, to which the Defence Ministry had agreed