Number of Naxalism-affected districts reduced to 3 from 6: MHA

The Ministry of Home Affairs on Wednesday said that the districts most affected by Naxalism have been brought down to three.

Now, only Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh are the most affected districts by Left Wing Extremism (LWE), the ministry said in a statement that came as 88 members of CPI (Maoist) surrendered in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra in yet another success for the anti-Naxal campaign.

“In a giant stride towards the Modi government’s vision of building a Naxal-free Bharat, the number of districts most affected by Naxalism has been brought down to three from six,” the ministry said.

In the category of LWE affected districts, the number has also been further brought down to just 11 from 18.

These 11 districts that are Left Wing Extremism affected, including the three most affected, are: Bijapur, Dantewada, Gariyaband, Kanker, Mohalla-Manpur-Ambagarh Chowki, Narayanpur and Sukma (all Chhattisgarh), West Singhbhum (Jharkhand), Balaghat (Madhya Pradesh), Gadchiroli (Maharashtra) and Kandhamal (Odisha).

The Modi government is committed to completely eradicating the Naxal menace by the 31^st of March 2026, the statement reiterated.

“Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and guidance of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the operational successes have surpassed all previous records this year wherein 312 LWE cadres have been eliminated, including CPI (Maoist) General Secretary and 08 other Polit Bureau/ Central Committee Members,” the MHA said.

As many as 836 LWE cadres have been arrested and 1,639 have surrendered and joined the mainstream.

The surrendered Naxalites include one Politburo Member and a Central Committee Member.

Under the Modi government, “unprecedented success” has been achieved in combating the Naxal menace through rigorous implementation of the National Action Plan and Policy, which envisages a multi-pronged approach, the statement said.

The action plan includes precise intelligence-based and people-friendly counter-LWE operations.

These steps were accompanied by swift domination of areas with a security vacuum, targeting of top leaders as well as over-ground workers, countering the nefarious ideology, rapid development of infrastructure and saturation of welfare schemes, choking of finances, enhanced coordination between states and centre governments and accelerated investigation and prosecution of Maoist-related cases.

Once called India’s “biggest internal security challenge” by the then prime minister in 2010, Naxalism is now visibly retreating. Naxals had planned a Red Corridor - stretching from Pashupati in Nepal to Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, the statement said.

In 2013, 126 districts from different states reported Naxal-related violence but by March 2025, this tally had fallen to just 18 districts, with only six classified as ‘Most Affected Districts’, it said.