Government decision on Maoist-affected districts in India
The government is planning to reduce the number of Maoist-affected
districts by about a fifth in the country.- Over 20 of the 106 districts which have been described as being Maoist-affected and are part of the Red Corridor will be removed from the list. This exercise, under way now for two years, is being done for the first time since 2006, when the Maoist-affected districts were identified and graded on the basis of their violence profile.
- The names of the districts and the reasons for being considered to be taken off the list have been communicated to the States and a response is awaited.
- However, the names are not being revealed now because of the sensitivities of the States which fear that once a district is taken off the list financial aid which is made available to the districts – to the tune of Rs. 30 crore annually for various developmental work – will dry up.
What are LWE affected states?
The 106 districts which span 10 States — Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra
Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar
Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — are described as those affected by Left Wing
Extremism (LWE) and constitute the ‘Red Corridor.’ Of these, 44 districts are
said to be the worst-affected. India has a total of 683 districts.
The considerations on which the government has examined the
districts with LWE features are:
- Their violence profile.
- An assessment of the kind of logistical and other support provided to armed Maoist cadres by their sympathisers and over ground workers.
- The kind of positive changes brought about by development work that these districts have seen.
