The State of Chhattisgarh which has been in the news thanks to the huge number of casualties sustained in Maoists attacks, the focus is now shifted to the scathing remark made by the Chhattisgarh top cop questioning the very capability of the CRPF to take on the Maoists. To recap, following the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram suggesting to the Chhattisgarh government to redeploy CRPF in Maoist-hit areas, the State’s police chief shot back by saying “we cannot teach the paramilitary personnel how to walk”. The DGP questioned as to why the CRPF was being repeatedly ambushed by Maoists. Following this outburst, the CRPF as well as the Central government have expressed disappointment over the DGP airing his complaint in full public view. However the issue is about the operational viability of the current fight against the Maoists. If the CRPF has not been able to handle the onslaught of attacks, it will have to admit its own inability rather than continue to suffer losses while trying to defend its prestige. As is seen, the CRPF has become easy targets for the Maoists and the former is being led as sheep to the slaughter. There is also the claim that the recent killing of CRPF personnel is due to violation of Standard Operating Procedures. All this must be looked into. The facts must be brought out. Only then can we realize our inadequacies and make the necessary correction to strengthen the operations against the Maoists or in other words make it viable. It is worth mentioning that the Maoists have massacred 75 CRPF personnel on April 6 and another 27 security personnel, almost all of them from the CRPF, on June 29.
All this conjures up images of similar casualties borne by the Naga IRB unit, deployed in the thick jungles of Chhattisgarh a few years back where they had to fight for their survival. While the Naga IRB unit did suffer some heavy losses though not in the scale of what the CRPF is going through, nevertheless the Naga jawans proved their mettle on the battlefield, something which the current lot of CRPF has not been able to do. No doubt there was huge opposition by the Naga civil society to the deployment of our IRB unit in the jungles of Chhattisgarh to fight the Maoists. The so called Daring Ninth had even come in for heavy criticism for their off the field ‘conduct’ including by this newspaper. To their credit the 9 Naga IRB unit did leave a mark on the battle field with appreciation from all corners. There are reports that the Central and Chhattisgarh police forces continue to stick to the operational strategies of the Naga IRB to combat the elusive Naxals. Recent reports said that even police academies have included a couple of the strategies in their training course. According to Liremo Lotha, the first commandant to lead the “Daring Ninth”, the Chhattisgarh police is strictly enforcing the SOP, which the Nagas modified during their stint in Bastar region. They have even given the name “Naga SOP” to the modified Standard Operating Procedures. So the fact that the Naga IRB battle doctrine to combat the Maoists is coming in handy proves that at least on the battle field, the Naga IRB have shown their fighting prowess, which seems to be lacking with the CRPF. And this could the reason why the Chhattisgarh DGP is frustrated.
