No plan to post fresh IPS officers in Maoist areas

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh may want “young, bold and courageous” officers in their initial years of service to lead the fight against Maoists, but 45 days after he made the suggestion, his ministry says it has no such plan.

Singh had made the remark at a meeting he chaired and attended by Chief Secretaries and directors-general of police to review the Maoist situation on June 27.

In the meeting, he said young officers should be posted district magistrates and superintendents of police in their initial years of service to provide “better local administration and leadership”.

However, the ministry did not initiate any measures to bring the suggestion into reality. On August 12, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju virtually contradicted Singh by informing the Lok Sabha through a written reply that the ministry has no such plans.

To a question on whether the government proposes to post newly inducted IPS officers in Maoist-affected districts for a limited period of two or three years, Rijiju said, “At present, there is no such proposal to post newly inducted IPS officers in Left Wing Extremism  affected areas.”

Presently, 1,801 IPS officers are posted in Maoist-affected states but the deployment of such officers in highly targeted Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are very less compared to others states like UP and West Bengal.  Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, which had reported the highest number of Maoist-related incidents in 2014 till July 7, has only 107 and 81 IPS officers respectively on ground to deal with Maoist-related actions.

Jharkhand had reported 197 incidents in which 46 people, including 6 security personnel, were killed this year while Chhattisgarh had 179 incidents (71 killed, including 37 security personnel).

Though a section of the security establishment has mooted the idea of deploying fresh IPS inductees, irrespective of their state cadre, for a period of two years, it has not found favour with others.