THE CRPF is moving in four battalions comprising more than 4,000 personnel in the worst Naxal-violence affected areas of Bastar in Chhattisgarh as part of a strategy to launch a “decisive battle” to match the Union Government’s latest resolve of ending the Maoist problem by March 2026. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while declaring this deadline in the Chhattisgarh capital of Raipur last month, emphasised that a “strong and ruthless” plan of action was required to rid the country of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) -- once termed the country’s biggest internal security threat. Official sources said the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) -- the lead internal security and anti-Naxal operations force in the country -- withdrew three battalions from Jharkhand and one from Bihar for deployment in the Bastar region, about 450-500 kilometres south of Raipur. It was felt that the Naxal violence situation in these two states had improved and incidents were negligible.

 

Hence, these battalions can be better utilised in Chhattisgarh, where the anti-Naxal operations are now concentrated, they said. The CRPF’s 159, 218, 214 and 22 battalions are being deployed to add manpower to the existing force in the LWE theatre of Chhattisgarh, the sources said. Each CRPF battalion has an operational strength of about a 1,000 personnel. These units are being deployed in the far-flung districts of Dantewada and Sukma and along the remote locations of the state’s trijunction border with Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, they said. A senior officer of the force in Delhi said these battalions would further join hands with the CRPF’s CoBRA units to set up more forward operating bases (FOBs) in the districts’ remote areas so that development work could be initiated after securing the area. The force has created about 40 FOBs in Chhattisgarh over the last three years. Setting up such bases comes with its own set of challenges such as ambushes and improvised explosive device attacks by Maoists against the troops, he said.