Cuttack: Odisha, which was considered to be a highly Maoist infested State, has succeeded in reducing the activities of Left Wing Extremists (LWE) to 8 districts now.
The State experienced the scourge of Left Wing Extremism for more than three decades. In 2012, as many as 19 districts were declared as Security Related Expenditure (SRE) district.
In April 2018, six districts -Jajpur, Dhenkanal, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Gajapati and Ganjam- were declared as free from Maoist activities and were removed from the Central government sponsored SRE Scheme, a scheme exclusively meant for capacity building for Maoist affected districts.
Now, the State government have approved to remove five districts, namely, Angul, Boudh, Sambalpur, Deogarh and Nayagarh from the SRE scheme. Thus, eleven districts have so far been assessed to be free of Maoist activities in a span of two years.
” This is largely due to the impact of security response and good governance by the State government”, said a press release issued by the police head quarter, here on Friday.
“The progressive fizzling out of the Maoist influence in the State is an indicative of the growing acceptance by the people to the developmental agenda of the State government and their dis-enchantment towards the obsolete Maoist ideology”, added the release.
