Union Home Minister Amit Shah used Parliament on Monday (March 30) to mount one of his most scathing attacks on the Congress over left wing extremism, holding the party responsible not just for allowing Naxalism to spread, but for actively shielding it.
Replying to the debate in the Lok Sabha on “Efforts to free the country from left-wing extremism (LWE)”, Shah declared that the country has become free of Naxals with the apex body of the Maoists and the central structure almost completely dismantled, and accused the Congress of doing “nothing” to end the long spell of violence perpetrated by the ultras.
Shah blames Chidambaram
Shah attacked former Home Minister P Chidambaram. “As home minister, Chidambaram is on record saying he couldn’t ask Naxalites to lay down their weapons, even after 76 CRPF personnel were killed in Dantewada,” Shah said. “What kind of government were you running?”
He then turned to Rahul Gandhi. “In his long political career, Rahul Gandhi has often been seen with Naxal sympathisers,” Shah said. He alleged that such individuals were present during the Bharat Jodo Yatra. “The Congress party and its leaders have become Naxalites,” he said. “They will have to answer for this in elections.”
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He also attacked the National Advisory Council, the UPA-era body headed by Sonia Gandhi. Shah alleged that one of its members, Harsh Mander, ran an NGO that employed the wife of a top Maoist, a woman herself wanted for Naxal activities. “How could anyone expect such a government to crack down on Naxalism?” he asked.
‘Naxalism expanded in Indira Gandhi rule’
Moving to the longer arc of the insurgency, Shah argued that Naxalism did not just happen under Congress rule, but the government enabled it.
“Naxalism started in 1970 from Naxalbari. By 1971, 3,620 violent incidents were reported in Bengal,” he said. Within a decade, the movement had spread to Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. “In those 10 years, except for two years of the Janata government, it was Congress in power.” When Indira Gandhi returned, he said, Naxalism kept expanding, eventually reaching 12 states.
He also revisited Salwa Judum, the controversial government-backed village militia programme launched in 2005. Shah said it was Congress leader Mahendra Karma who started it and that the Supreme Court’s 2011 order banning it and withdrawing weapons from civilians effectively left those villagers defenceless.
“The result was that Naxalites killed everyone involved with Salwa Judum.” He went further, condemning the judge who authored that ruling, noting pointedly that the same judge was later chosen as the Congress’s Vice Presidential candidate.
Poverty didn’t cause this
Perhaps the sharpest ideological intervention of the speech was Shah’s flat rejection of the development argument that the view, common among academics and some policymakers, that Naxalism is rooted in poverty, displacement and state neglect.
“Maoism has nothing to do with development,” Shah said. “The only ideology they follow is to overthrow democratic governments and come to power through the barrel of the gun.”
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He challenged those making the poverty argument directly. If underdevelopment was the cause, he asked, why did districts like Ballia and Saharsa, backward regions in the 1970s located near Naxal-affected areas, remain largely unaffected? “The fact is that development couldn’t reach those areas because of Naxalism. It is the Maoists who kept these areas backward,” he said.
“The roots of Naxalism are not connected to poverty,” he said. “Just because development didn’t reach some regions, does that justify picking up guns?”
Urban Naxals and cost of romanticisation
Shah reserved particular contempt for what he called “urban Naxals”. He claimed them to be intellectuals and human rights voices who, advocate dialogue while ignoring the human cost on the other side.
“They have written 2,000 articles,” he said, “but not one to sympathise with the woman who lost her child to Maoism, or the 5,000 paramilitary personnel who gave their lives, or those left disabled by Naxal attacks. This is hypocrisy and I will never condone it.”
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He issued a direct challenge: “Visit a rescue camp, spend two nights there, and meet the 15,000 children and villagers who were dragooned into Naxal ranks and spent years living like animals. Hear what they have to say. Don’t come here and romanticise Maoism.”
The government’s terms
On having a dialogue with Naxals, Shah said, “Our policy is that talks can only happen with those who put down weapons. Those who won’t will be eliminated.”
He said the government’s operational shift began in August 2024, after Chhattisgarh, which he accused of shielding Naxals under its previous Congress administration, came under BJP rule. On August 24, 2024, he had declared Naxalism would be ended by March 31, 2026. “Between then and now,” he said, “we have eradicated Naxalism.”
The figures he cited, 706 Naxalites neutralised in the last three years, 2,218 arrested, 4,839 surrendered. “Those who did not want dialogue were neutralised,” he said. “Those who surrendered were not.”
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