Left-wing extremism in five districts, state tells Centre

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state government has requested the Centre to declare five districts as Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected districts. The state has proposed the inclusion of Wayanad, Kannur, Kozhikode, Malappuram and Palakkad in the categorisation made by the ministry of home affairs.



"We have proposed the names of the five districts and in various discussions, the Centre has assured that our case will be considered favourably. We are awaiting the formal orders in this regard," state police chief Loknath Behera said. As per the document issued by the MHA, one of the criteria for a district to be included under the scheme is the presence of armed 'dalams', their free movement and their fire power that would determine the potentiality of an extremist outfit to commit violent acts and be a serious threat to internal security.

The state has pinned its claims on this point, by citing the repeated sightings of Maoists in the forests in the Western Ghats in Wayanad, Kannur, Palakkad and the encounter in Nilambur forests that killed the central committee member CPI (Maoist) Kuppu Devraj. The spread of active mass front organizations of the naxal groups that lend constant and effective support in terms of logistics and safe refuge to the armed cadres is another criterion.

Top police sources said the recent reports by the intelligence bureau (IB) and state special branch show that several new organisations posing as human rights organisations to take up public causes are front organisations of LWE groups. The state has requested to consider all these factors for inclusion of the five districts under the LWE-affected category.

At present, the Centre has declared 106 districts from Andhra, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal as LWE-affected districts.

Once these districts are declared as LWE-afected, the state would receive additional funds from the Centre under the category of SRE-scheme (security related expenses).As per MHA, this includes funds for training the state police force, community policing, improving infrastructural facilities and disseminating information about various welfare schemes of the government.