The Hindu : Police draw up blueprint to tackle naxal threat

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 30, 2004

National

National - Elections 2004

Police draw up blueprint to tackle naxal threat

A memorial honouring officers and constables who laid down their lives fighting terrorists, in the Gadchiroli district police headquarters. - photo: Vivek Bendre.

Arunkumar Bhatt

GADCHIROLI

The elections in the naxalite-dominated hills and forests of Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, bordering Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, can be likened to a fight between two parties, neither of whom field candidates — the police and the extremists.

While naxalites campaign for people to boycott the elections as soon as the poll dates are announced, the police conduct special drives to make people aware of their right to vote and how important it is to exercise one's franchise. As the polling day draws closer, the police step up security and the naxalites issue threats, often backed by attacks. But despite this, the district records one of the highest polling percentages in the country: 65 to 70 per cent.

This time, the police are expecting more trouble and have asked for helicopters, not only for aerial surveillance and reconnaissance but also to help polling staff to reach remote destinations without getting ambushed on the way. "We have asked the Government for helicopters and we are sure that aircraft will be spared for us, at least for aerial surveillance," Inspector Deepak Deshpande, who heads naxal cell of the district police told The Hindu. He did not clarify who would provide the choppers.

The cell makes counter-insurgency plans for the district Superintendent of Police (SP) and the Inspector General of Police, Anti-Naxalite Operations, based in Nagpur, as do Mr. Deshpande's counterparts in the other naxalite-affected districts of Chandrapur and Bhandara.

Mr. Deshpande said that the polling parties carrying their materials and electronic voting machines had to walk through long distances in the jungle. This made them vulnerable to attacks by the extremists. "We will need a lot of manpower to escort them and to send `road opening parties' ahead of them," he said. "But an air lift would eliminate the risk and save on manpower."

The police have reason to be worried. There has been a spurt in naxal attacks in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. They have acquired sophisticated weapons such as grenade-firing rifles, remotely activated land mines and improvised explosive devices. Besides, the extremists have changed their tactics. Earlier, their units called dalams, operated only in their respective areas. Now they have formed special action teams to carry out operations over a wide area with the local dalams only providing support.

The Gadchiroli Police have drawn an elaborate ground plan to set up temporary outposts throughout the district and ambush points at inter-State crossing points to insulate the district against infiltration by naxalite action teams. The likely infiltration routes would be blocked by a sizeable force, Mr. Deshpande said. These will be backed by Long Range Patrols (LRPs). Led by a police inspector or a deputy superintendent of police, a party of 10 to 15 armed policemen will go out into the jungle for four to five days to reconnoitre a specific area and get `actionable intelligence.' The LRPs will visit villages in their areas but will not stay there. "Our objective is to dominate the district and pin down the naxals in their hideouts," Mr. Deshpande said.

Gadchiroli district has three Assembly segments. Of these, Armori falls in the Chimur Lok Sabha constituency while Gadchiroli and Sironcha are part of the Chandrapur Lok Sabha constituency. The district has 712 polling booths. The police have identified 204 of them as `hypersensitive', taking into account their location, topography, past record of attacks on police, polling parties and political sensitivity.

The naxalites have declared some areas as `liberated zones of the Dandakaranya.' They are expected to do their best to prevent the police and polling officers from entering these zones. The `line of control' between a zone and the district could see clashes. Though the naxalites have only about a dozen dalams, each having about 15 rebels, the DSP, Raj Vardhan, said he would have to deploy several companies of the State Reserve Police to tackle them so that the 570,407 voters could cast their ballots.

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