The Union government has notified five Naxal-violence affected districts of Andhra Pradesh following the state government recently carrying out a reorganisation of territorial limits in these regions, officials said Tuesday.
A review was carried out by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) “in consultation” with the state government and central security forces after which the new Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected districts have been named, they said.
The number of such districts remains at five – the same as in the last such notification of June 202.1 A notification issued by the Left Wing Extremism division of MHA on December 8, 2022 named Alluri Sitharama Raju, East Godavari, Parvathipuram Manyam, Srikakulam and Vishakhapatnam as the LWE-affected districts of the state.
These five districts will now be provided special central funds, as earmarked under the security-related expenditure (SRE) scheme for LWE hit states, for the financial year 2022-23, it said.
Alluri Sitharama Raju has been categorised as the “most affected LWE district” of Andhra Pradesh. Districts that account for 85-90 per cent of Maoist violence in the country fall in this category.
Earlier, as per the last home ministry notification of June 2021 on this subject, the five LWE-affected districts of Andhra Pradesh were East Godavari, Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and West Godavari.
Officials said the change in the categorisation of LWE districts was done at the request of the Andhra government which intimated to the MHA in September last year that the Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy-led state government has carried out a reorganisation of districts of the state. Therefore, the Maoist violence-hit regions comprising the older five districts have been “reorganised” into 11 new districts. The state government sought to include these 11 districts under the SRE scheme.
However, the joint review categorised only the five districts which have been named in the latest notification as LWE affected in Andhra Pradesh, officials said.
Thirteen new districts were carved out by the AP government, adding to the existing 13, and they came into existence on Telugu New Year’s Day- Ugadi- on April 4 last year.
The central government told Parliament during the recently concluded session in December that the incidents of Naxal violence have reduced by 77 per cent from a high of 2,213 in 2010 to 509 in 2021. The resultant deaths (civilians and security forces) have reduced by 85 per cent from the high of 1,005 in 2010 to 147 in 2021, Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai had said in a written reply in Lok Sabha, adding that the declining trend continued in 2022.
The minister also said the geographical spread of the violence has also significantly reduced and only 191 police stations of 46 districts reported LWE-related violence in 2021 as compared to a high of 465 police stations in 96 districts in 2010.
The decline in the geographical spread is also reflected in the reduced number of districts covered under the SRE scheme and the number of these districts reduced from 126 to 90 in April 2018 and further to 70 in July 2021, according to data provided by him.
The number of districts contributing approximately 90 per cent of the LWE violence, categorised as most LWE-affected districts, also came down to 30 from 35 in 2018 and further to 25 in 2021, he said.
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