The ongoing violence in Manipur is not stopping even after more than three years. The government has taken a big decision regarding this. The Center has decided to deploy two battalions of the CoBRA unit of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), meant for jungle warfare-like operations, in Manipur.
Ethnic violence between the Meitei and Kuki-Jo groups in Manipur has killed more than 260 people and left thousands homeless since May 2023. The state administration and the central government are making efforts to restore permanent peace in the state, but have not been successful so far.
Also read: NPPA fixed prices of 30 medicines, know the new rates
Unit will be sent from Bengal and Assam
The Union Home Ministry has approved the proposal to deploy two Cobra battalions of CRPF – 207th Battalion based in West Bengal and 210th Battalion based in Assam – for operational work in Manipur. A senior security official said, ‘These two battalions of Cobra will conduct special operations against armed groups involved in violence in Manipur.’
Why was Cobra formed?
He said that both these units will reach Mamipur in the next few weeks. The CRPF raised the ‘Commando Battalion for Resolute Action’ (CoBRA) in 2008-09 to deal with the threat of left-wing extremism prevalent in several Indian states apart from insurgency in some North-Eastern states. Cobra currently has a total of 10 battalions and they are mostly deployed in anti-Naxal operations. Each battalion of Cobra has about 1,000 commandos.
Also read: 84.7 percent children are victims of malnutrition, one third are underweight, what happened to the nutrition schemes?
The Home Ministry has credited the commandos of this battalion for conducting successful intelligence-based jungle warfare and guerrilla tactics operations against the Naxalites. According to the ministry, these operations led to the end of Maoist violence in the country in March this year.
Officials said operations in the Left Wing Extremism affected areas are now mainly limited to detection and destruction of hidden IEDs and general security of the area and hence the CRPF planned to send two units of CoBRA to Manipur, where full restoration work is still underway.
Comments are closed.