Naxalism has killed 12,000 people in 20 yrs: Rajnath Singh
Asserting that Naxalite violence has killed nearly 12,000 people in the past 20 years, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday launched a new strategy to counter Naxalism. Choking the financial funding of the Naxalites forms the foundation of the new 'SAMADHAN' doctrine. The strategy also involves the use of advanced technology like drones and smart guns with biometrics-activated triggers.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh today chaired a Left Wing Extremism (LWE) situation review meeting where he unveiled a new strategy to counter Naxalim in the country. The meeting came a fortnight after the Sukma attack, the deadliest Naxal strike on the CRPF in years, in which 25 jawans lost their lives. Noting that Maoist violence has killed nearly 12,000 people have been killed in the last two decades, Rajnath said that choking the financial funding of Naxalites forms the foundation of the new strategy. (Notably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while announcing the demonetisation decision, had said that the note ban exercise would, among others, strike at Naxal funding.) The new strategy also focuses on using advanced technology including drones and smart guns that feature triggers that get activated by bio-metrics. At today's meeting, Singh launched a new security operations doctrine called 'SAMADHAN' - Smart leadership, Aggressive strategy, Motivation and Training, Actionable intelligence, Dashboard-based key performance indicators and key result areas, Harnessing technology, Action plan for each threat, No access to funding. Rajnath also invoked the 9/11 attack in the United States, saying America took the incident as a challenge to ensure that no such incident happens in the future. The 9/11 commission had said it was not just an intelligence failure but imagination failure too, Rajnath said.The LWE review meeting was attended by several chief ministers including Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh), Naveen Patnaik (Odisha), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh), Devendra Fadnavis (Maharashtra), Nitish Kumar (Bihar) and Raghubar Das (Jharkhand). Notably, Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra Pradesh) and Kalvakuntla Chandrashekhar Rao (Telangana) were absent.ALSO READ | Why Naxals succeed attack after attack in Chhattisgarh