New Delhi, May 24 -- On May 19, 2026, Union Home Minister Amit Shah declared in Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh, that Bastar had become Naxal-free. It was a historic declaration indicating the closure of one of the most debilitating and violent chapters in the history of independent India.
To the chagrin of Naxal drum-beaters, Urban-Naxals and Maoists sympathisers, the eradication of Naxalism-Maoism from India and a Naxal-free Bastar is one of the greatest national security achievements of the Narendra Modi government. It also comes across as the most decisive step forward in firming up India's internal security framework and sphere. The eradication and the blow are so clinical and all-encompassing that Naxals will never be able to regroup and revive. Urban Naxals are also tethering to their end, afflicted with acute depression; their only recourse is foreign pulpits and podiums where they can regurgitate their tired arguments of state repression under Modi. The world is not buying those arguments anymore.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah pointed out a hard truth when he said that these regions have suffered from neglect, poverty and backwardness for decades because of Naxalism and not the other way round. He had turned the spurious argument on its head. Speaking in the Lok Sabha in March 2026, Amit Shah argued that poverty spread because of Naxalism and not the other way round. Naxal sympathisers had long argued that the "root cause" of Naxalism was that these regions were backward. Shah argued that because these regions were allowed to become strongholds of Naxalism, they became backward.
The state, especially under the UPA, and the Congress, had abdicated its responsibility. It had withdrawn and surrendered these regions to this pernicious ideology. Shah pointed out how "earlier this area was under the shadow of the guns and bayonets" and how "the entire region remained deprived of development because of Naxalites. People here did not get ration cards, nor the benefit of free foodgrain schemes, nor health insurance of up to Rs.5 lakh. Their produce was not procured at Rs.3,100 per quintal. There was no trace of employment, electricity did not reach the villages, water did not reach, and schools were not built."
The development activists' cabal and the NGO ecosystem have never been able to effectively answer the question of why, even after decades of welfarism and India being a welfare state, these vast swathes of India saw no growth or prospects. Why haven't Naxal sympathisers such as Arundhati Roy, Binayak Sen, Harsh Mander, Aakar Patel, Medha Patkar, Prashant Bhushan, TM Krishna, Nikhil Dey, Arun Roy, Gautam Navlakha, Nivedita Menon, et.al. never asked this basic question?
Amit Shah gave figures, and Urban Naxals haven't challenged these figures. He said, "We have completed the construction of 12,211 kilometres of roads at a cost of Rs 20,557 crore. A total of 13,000 mobile towers have been planned, out of which 5,000 towers have already been installed across Naxal-affected areas of the country. 1,804 bank branches have been opened, 1,321 ATMs have been installed, and the work of opening 890 post offices has also been completed. 259 Eklavya Model Schools have been opened, 46 ITIs and 49 Skill Development Centres have been established, and skill training has been provided to more than 90,000 youth and women."
Creative innovations saw the launching of the Bastar Pandum and the Bastar Olympics. Both are unique initiatives that have expedited the psychological rehabilitation of affected people in the region. The Bastar Pandum has become a major platform "for tribal dance, songs, language, traditional attire, cuisine, and other cultural elements," and 45,000 people have participated in it. The Bastar Olympics saw the participation of 3 lakh, 94 thousand athletes, which included a team of former Naxals who had been rehabilitated. This team performed best.
Why were these not done earlier, when the Congress-led UPA, with the self-professed pro-people NAC controlling the strings of policy formulation and cabinet decisions, was in power for an uninterrupted decade? Why did the Left, led by the CPM and the CPI, which propped the UPA and the Congress in power, not push for these developments? Their concerns for the backwards were tied to their ideological and political agendas. To let Bastar simmer in backwardness and under the grip of Naxalism suited their politics and its goal of keeping India internally on the boil.
A recent study by "The Indian Matrix" - "Reclaiming the Heartland: How State Capacity Defeated the Maoist Insurgency", clearly brings out how the Indian state, under the Modi decade, had effectively asserted itself to make India Naxal-free. An act that the UPA decades had repeatedly shunned.
For over 5 decades, the report notes, "the Indian State ceded" its monopoly, its duty in its "central heartland", creating a vacuum in which "a parallel sovereign collected taxes, administered justice and waged war." The UPA was accommodating to Naxals, allowing its expansion, both ideologically and physically.
Let us recall the peculiar phenomenon where the Congress Home Minister P Chidambaram advocated a hardline against Naxalism, while his own party men and allies opposed it publicly and stalled it in the cabinet. In its strategic push to dismantle the Maoist-Naxal stranglehold, when Union Home Minister Amit Shah strongly advocated and pushed for establishing "permanent Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) deep inside Maoist core territories, including the Abhujmad region in Chhattisgarh", one could not help but remember how the Congress-Sonia-NAC leadership had stymied P Chidambaram's efforts to set up these FOBs in the past. Chidambaram may deny it. But it was public knowledge how he was then ideologically assailed by his party and NAC members. For BJP ministers Rajnath Singh and, later, Amit Shah, there was no such ideological hesitation, confusion or constraints. The clear goal that PM Modi set was that of a Naxal-free India.
The Congress-UPA was apologetic, accommodative, the report says, "prioritising talks and downplaying threats". The report makes an interesting observation: it argues, "When the State's posture is ambiguous, the local population hedges its bets, often sheltering insurgents for survival", and when the "State's posture is absolute, the insurgency's civilian support structure evaporates." PM Modi's government's relentlessness in wiping away the threat of Naxalism made this civilian support structure eventually evaporate.
The 2004-2013 years were the "Apologetic and Reluctant Era." The report reminds us of how, throughout these years, the state suffered from a "profound policy paralysis." The NAC members, many of whom "harboured deep sympathies for the Maoist cause" spoke of Naxals and Maoists as "our misguided children."
High-profile activists such as Arundhati Roy termed the Maoists as "Gandhians with Guns" and justified their terror and violence. This encouraged and incubated ideological ambivalence in the UPA dispensation. This ideological ambivalence disappeared post-2014, with the Modi dispensation.
2019 to 2023 saw a systematic push to dismantle the Naxal support structure. The sources of financial oxygen for the Maoists-Naxals were struck. The Indian Matrix report notes that "by aggressively hardening the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), the State choked the flow of international funding to NGOs and front organisations that subtly funnelled resources to the Maoist ecosystem." The Urban-Naxal network that extended ideological and legal cover to the armed cadres was also systematically exposed.
The approach was not surgical alone; it was also incentive-based. It also focused on surrender and rehabilitation. The Indian Matrix report observes how the "Niyad Nellanar" (Your Good Village) scheme, launched in 2024 in Chhattisgarh, was effective. It "mandated saturating a 5-kilometre radius around every new security camp with schools, roads, and healthcare." The ultimatum to the armed cadre was unambiguous: "surrender or die." Those who surrendered, the report observes, "were met with comprehensive rehabilitation policies and livelihood skilling. Those who didn't aren't around to tell the tale." Let us recall that between 2016 and 2025, over 8,000 surrenders had taken place. It pointed to a complete ideological and infrastructure collapse among the Naxals.
2024-2026, the push entered its final phase with intellectual and financial lines choked, and the complete "decapitation of the top leadership." All this while the Congress and the Communists cried, calling for being accommodative and for talks. Amit Shah was assertive in his stance when he told the Lok Sabha in March 2026 that talks should not be held with those who carry and wield the gun. "Give up arms, and talks will follow."
Between 2024 and 2026, the Indian Matrix report records, "the most feared commanders of the PLGA were wiped out." Among those neutralised was Madvi Hidma, the mastermind of the 2010 Dhantewada and 2021 Sukma attacks. While Hidma's ideological comrades mourned, the Indian Republic heaved a sigh of relief. The "ideological and operational core" had been systematically decimated.
The era of the apologetic state was over, the "eradication era" of 2024-2026 was triumphant, and the "Indian Republic systematically dismantled the largest internal security threat in its history." Naxal-free India became one of PM Modi's biggest achievements. Amit Shah, as Union Home Minister, had kept his promise. Naxalism, which was once justified by a large section of the Congress and the Left as a way of life, an ideology that one could do business and live with, was obliterated. While Naxal sympathisers, the real traitors, mourned, the Indian Republic breathes and lives in a new dawn.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC), BJP, and the Chairman of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.