First Person | The Real Story

Ghazala Wahab

After sorting out the Kashmir issue—through dismemberment of the state and subjugation of the local population—the Narendra Modi government turned its attention to another pressing problem which, in its perception, has been stymieing India’s march towards Viksit Bharat. The Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-M), entrenched in the heart of India’s mineral wealth, the region encompassing parts of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Orissa.

Though the government of India has been fighting Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) since 2004—with fluctuating intensity of violence over the years—, in January 2024, the BJP government in Chhattisgarh launched a fight to finish, as the name Operation Kagaar suggests, under the larger operation Samadhan-Prahar started in 2017. Kagaar, an Urdu word for the edge, is a sub-regional operation. Hence, by government’s reckoning, the operation will continue until the Maoists are pushed over the edge.

Perhaps, this gives home minister Amit Shah the confidence to repeatedly assert that Naxalism (synonymous with LWE) will be wiped out by March 2026. Not surprising that Shah knows exactly when LWE will finish, because his government’s means of doing this is not ending extremism, but the extremist—and whoever is unfortunate enough to come in between. After all, he is the same person who recently asserted in the Parliament that his government ‘shoots terrorists right between the eyes’, taking no prisoners.

Consequently, over 400 have been killed, mainly in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, since the launch of Operation Kagaar alone. According to the data collected by Article 14, the figure of civilian casualties is higher than the Maoists and the security forces. A government in a hurry to declare success against LWE, has launched a scorched earth policy, in which the decades’ old grievances of the tribal population, i