The Cure: What the State Has Tried

In one line

The State's own answer has four parts, security, development, rights and rehabilitation, and the constitutional question is not whether to use them but in what order.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the response to Left Wing Extremism is officially a multi-pronged one. Under the National Policy and Action Plan approved in 2015 it combines security measures, development interventions, the assurance of the rights and entitlements of local communities, improvement in governance, and public perception management. Security has meant central force deployment, specialised units, fortified police stations and the Security Related Expenditure scheme; development has meant roads, mobile connectivity, schools, skill training and financial inclusion in the affected districts; rights have meant PESA, the Forest Rights Act and a minimum support price for minor forest produce; and rehabilitation has meant State surrender-and-rehabilitation policies. The Supreme Court in Nandini Sundar v. State of Chhattisgarh set the constitutional limit on the first of the four, and the Planning Commission's Expert Group set the policy limit: a response that treats the matter as a law and order problem alone will breed more of what it is answering.

The official framework

The National Policy and Action Plan, 2015. The Ministry of Home Affairs' stated approach: a multi-pronged strategy of security measures, development interventions, ensuring the rights and entitlements of local communities, improvement in governance, and public perception management.

Why the framework itself is examinable. It concedes, in a policy document, that the problem is not only a security problem. The State's own plan therefore supports the argument the Expert Group made in 2008, and a student can cite the plan against a purely military answer.

The division of responsibility. Police and public order are State subjects under entry 2 of the State List, so the operational response belongs to the States, and the Union supplements it with forces, funds and schemes.

Security

Central forces. Battalions of the Central Armed Police Forces, principally the Central Reserve Police Force, deployed in aid of the State police, with the specialised CoBRA, the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, raised for jungle warfare.

The Andhra Pradesh comparison. The Greyhounds, a specialised State force raised in 1989 and trained for small-unit forest operations, are the standard example of a security response that worked, and the standard caution with it is that it worked in combination with a surrender policy and with development spending rather than on its own.

The Security Related Expenditure scheme. The Union reimburses affected States for specified security expenditure. It was described to the Supreme Court in Nandini Sundar as then covering 83 districts in nine States.

Infrastructure. The Special Infrastructure Scheme and the scheme for fortified police stations, intended to put a police presence where there was none.