Govt issues fresh categorisation of LWE-hit areas, 12 out of 38 are 'most affected districts'
districts affected by Left Wing Extremism (LWE) across 10 states after their number came down by almost half in the past nine years, officials said on Thursday. Sharing the list with the director generals of police concerned, the officials said a total of 38 districts across these 10 states are categorised as LWE-affected with effect from April 1, 2024 compared to 75 in 2015.
The categorisation of the LWE-affected districts in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana and West Bengal provide the basis for deployment of resources under the National Policy and Action Plan, approved in 2015, to combat LWE holistically.
The Centre and the state governments have been working closely to tackle this problem. A number of interventions are being made, both security and development related, as a result of which there has been a marked improvement in the LWE scenario, the officials said.
Chhattisgarh still topped the chart with LWE-affected 15 districts, followed by Odisha (seven districts), Jharkhand (five), Madhya Pradesh (three), Kerala, Maharashtra, Telangana (two each), and West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh (one each), the officials said.
Of these, 12 districts — seven in Chhattisgarh, two in Odisha and one each in Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra — are categorised as «most affected districts», and nine — four in Jharkhand, two in Odisha and one each in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana — are categorised as «districts of concern», the
