With the defence ministry averse to sparing the army to fight Naxals, the Union home ministry will "fend for themselves" and take a fresh look at its strategy to fight Left-wing extremism including reorienting the available paramilitary forces. This was seen as a fall out of Thursday evening's Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which failed to arrive at a consensus over deployment of Army for fighting Naxals.
The Defence Ministry wanted complete clarity on the issue of unified command and the Army was understood to have placed a suggestion that it should be chaired by the senior-most army officer of the area of operation, a move rejected by the home ministry. A senior government official said the home ministry will have to "fend for themselves" in countering the menace and may even go in for recruitment of ex-servicemen, especially those who were deployed in Sri Lanka during IPKF, for de-mining the areas, as LTTE had trained Maoists in planting of mines.
"There will be no deployment of Army. The focus now is on strengthening the state police forces. The CCS will meet again shortly focusing on the revamped anti-Naxal strategy," the official said. The "signals" in this regard were very clear from Defence Minister A K Antony at the CCS meeting. "The signals were very much clear...the armed forces would not be spared for the anti-Naxal operations as they are already tied up with their own responsibilities," he said. "But we have to put our acts together soon or in the next five years, Maoists will become a bigger menace...threat," he added. I
f the armed forces are not deployed, then there would be no need to declare the Maoist-affected districts as "disturbed areas", a demand made by the Army, he said. The next CCS meeting will now discuss suggestions made by ministers relating to increasing the funding for modernisation of police forces. Besides, it would discuss a proposal that the Planning Commission and affected state government jointly work on development of the extremism-hit areas.
A supplementary note in this regard is likely to be sent to the CCS after the ministers and officials mull over them,he pointed out. There was also a suggestion in the CCS that a meeting of chief ministers of Maoist-hit states be called to elicit their suggestions on the operations and development works, and what their governments could do in this regard, the official said.
