Deadline: March 2026

Union Home Minister Amit Shah during his recent visitto Jagdalpur in southern Chattisgarh declared the deadline to make Chattisgarh ‘Maoist free’. It’s March 31, 2026. He was attending the closing ceremony of Bastar Olympics which was actually orgainsed by the persons in power to promote public relations and try to reverse the process of mass alienation. While praising the police for their ‘bravery’, he said how last year alone they killed 287 maoist insurgents, arrested over 1000 and secured the surrender of 837 militants. This was not the first time that Mr Shah set the deadline to eradicate what they call ‘naxalite menace’. Nor would it be the last. Of the 287 killed many were innocent civilians as officers allegedly would like to inflate the roster of the deceased for rewards. Human Rights bodies repeatedly highlighted this aspect of ‘naxalite hunting’ game.

There is Jungle Raj in Bastar region. By any standard this is the most backward area of India with enormous mineral deposits. The poor tribal people of Chattisgarh have been resisting corporate attempts to loot natural resources and destroy ecological balance for decades. No political party, left or right, came forward to thwart forceful eviction and fight for the tribals’ rights. Only Maoists helped them to assert their constitutional rights and build resistance against state terror. They learnt how to live with dignity and self-respect. The all important announcement of deadline was aimed at assuring the investors, rather plunderers, both domestic and foreign, that their long wait would be over soon. Close on the heels of Shah’s war cry against maoists came the statement of the Chief Minister of Chattisgarh Vishnu Deo Sai that he was going to attend Investors’ Meet in New Delhi to highlight prospects of manufacturing industry, mining and tourism in Bastar which was even dubbed as more beautiful than Kashmir by Amit Shah.

Not that the ‘naxalite ghost’ is haunting them only in hilly terrain in Chattisgarh. These ‘ghosts’ are in plains too as they find ‘urban naxalism’ in every voice of dissent in cities and semi-urban localities—in colleges, in universities, in art exhibitions, in literature, in social media, literally everywhere. So they are planning to enact new laws to curb alleged naxalism in urban India. After the states of Chattisgarh, Telengana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, it is now the turn of Maharashtra to enact Public Security Act against frontal organisations of naxalites, as if existing repressive laws are not enough to make their fiefdoms ‘opposition free’. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on December 18, 2024 presented the Maharashtra Special Public Security Act, 2024, in the on-going winter session of the Maharashtra State Assembly. The CM said it would be sent to the joint select committee and brought up again in the monsoon session after taking into account all views and opinions.

When the Bill was first introduced in the Maharashtra State Assembly in July, 2024, former chief minister and Congress MLA Prithiviraj Chavan said, “This is nothing but to muzzle protests”. The bill targets a wide range of actions by suspects: interference with the maintenance of public order and administration of the law generating fear and apprehension in the public, encouraging or preaching disobedience of the law, etc. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties had said that the Bill “is unconstitutional and [has been] brought with a view to curb dissent”.

For one thing the Bill gives the government the sweeping power to declare any suspect organisation as an “unlawful organisation” conducting “unlawful activities”. The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967 (UAPA) is India’s main anti-terror law that is used extensively in ‘naxalism-related’ cases, in Kashmir and in NE. But they need one more Act to make it difficult for peaceful protesters to take to streets. The provisions of the Bill are draconian and its wide definitions will cripple whatever remains of democratic space.

22-12-2024

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 28, Jan 5 - 11, 2025