Kondapalli in Bastar shows what state presence looks like after the Maoist withdrawal

Why in the News

Kondapalli, a village of 600 people in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district that served as the base of the most dreaded Maoist battalion, now has a road, a bus, grid electricity, a cellphone tower and a new school. The change moves the test of the insurgency’s end from the absence of armed cadre to the delivery of ordinary services, since a surrendered commander now demands from the State the borewell, pond, land rights and visiting doctor he once took up arms against it over.

How does the forward base model work in the Red Corridor?

1. Step one, the camp: A central armed police force announces a forward operating base inside a village previously controlled by the Maoists.
2. Step two, clearing operations: A series of encounters follows, which pushes the armed cadre out of the area.
3. Step three, the road: An engineering agency opens a motorable road to the camp, which ends the physical isolation the insurgency depended on.
4. Step four, civil administration: Grid electricity, telecom towers, schools, anganwadis, ration shops, Aadhaar enrolment and bank accounts follow the road.
5. Step five, the political process: Elections resume and elected panchayat bodies begin to function.
6. Application in Kondapalli: The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) announced its forward base in the village in November 2024, and this sequence has run there since.

What is the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA)?

1. About: The PLGA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), organised into platoons, companies and battalions.
2. Its role here: Kondapalli served as the base of Battalion No. 1, the most dreaded unit of the PLGA.

What was Battalion No. 1?

1. About: Battalion No. 1 was the main armed formation of the Maoists in south Bastar, camped in the jungle outside Kondapalli.
2. Present position: The battalion is gone from the area and security forces now camp in the same space.

What is a Revolutionary People’s Committee?

1. About: It is a grassroots governing body of the Maoists that ran village level administration, land distribution and dispute settlement in areas under their control.
2. Its role here: A former commander of one such committee surrendered in Kondapalli in March 2025.

What is the Bal Sangam?

1. About: The Bal Sangam is the children’s wing of the Maoists, used to recruit and indoctrinate minors in areas under their control.

What is the Chetna Natya Manch?

1. About: The Chetna Natya Manch is the Maoists’ cultural troupe, which used song and theatre on themes such as jal, jungle and zameen to mobilise villagers.

What was the Salwa Judum?

1. About: The Salwa Judum was a civilian counter insurgency force set up in Chhattisgarh in 2005, which armed villagers against the Maoists.
2. Legal status: The Supreme Court declared it illegal in 2011 and ordered the disarming of the appointed special police officers.

What is the Red Corridor?

1. About: The Red Corridor is the belt of forested, mineral rich and largely tribal districts across central and eastern India where Maoist influence was concentrated.
2. Scale in Chhattisgarh: Kondapalli was one of nearly 400 villages in the State’s Red Corridor where the state had little say or presence.

What is the Border Roads Organisation (BRO)?

1. About: The BRO is a road construction agency under the Ministry of Defence that builds and maintains roads in border and strategically sensitive areas.
2. Its role here: It began work on the Tarrem to Kondapalli road soon after security forces pushed the Maoists back in November 2024.

What is a Bailey bridge?

1. About: A Bailey bridge is a portable, prefabricated steel truss bridge assembled on site without heavy equipment, used where permanent bridges cannot be built quickly.
2. Its use here: The BRO installed nine Bailey bridges over river streams on the stretch past Kondapalli.

What is the Mahtari Vandan Yojana?

1. About: It is a Chhattisgarh government scheme that transfers Rs 1,000 a month to eligible married women through direct benefit transfer.
2. Its role here: One villager’s mother opened a bank account last year and now receives this transfer.

How did the Maoists govern Kondapalli?

1. Territorial claim: Kondapalli lay in the Maoists’ South Bastar division, part of what they called the Liberated Zone.
2. Strength of the formation: The division was one of the strongest Maoist formations and among the last to fall, and could gather the support of 400 to 500 people at short notice.
3. Economic function of the village: Kondapalli mattered to the Maoists because their supplies came from its local market.
4. Commemorative gatherings: Hundreds of villagers were assembled every year at a 64 foot tall memorial in Komatpalli, part of the Kondapalli gram panchayat, for Martyrs’ Week.
5. Land and housing: The Maoists redistributed land and helped villagers build their houses, which is how they gained trust.
6. Local public works: They built small roads and a pond, and asked villagers to donate money for the treatment of anyone who fell sick.
7. Forest rule: Cutting trees was punishable under their order.
8. What was withheld: Residents describe the arrangement as delivering a sense of security and of being seen, with little development alongside it.

How was that order enforced?

1. Conscription pressure: At least one person from every village had to join, which put pressure on families to give up their sons or daughters.
2. Recruitment through front organisations: A boy recruited as a teenager passed through the Bal Sangam and then the Chetna Natya Manch, singing about saving jal, jungle and zameen.
3. Fear of dispossession: Recruits were told the government would steal their land and that they would eventually have to leave the village.
4. Control of movement: Villagers leaving the Kondapalli gram panchayat were questioned on their return.
5. Public punishment: Wrongdoers were beaten publicly under a tree.
6. Killing of suspected informers: Those suspected of informing to the police were killed, and others left the village.
7. Destruction of state assets: The Maoists burnt down the only school and the adjoining hostel in the 2000s to stop security forces sheltering there, and destroyed the electric poles the administration brought.
8. Withdrawal of officials: Forest officials and the patwari, the village records keeper, stopped coming to Kondapalli.
9. Control of communication: Phones were seized and villagers were told not to use them.
10. Cost on the other side: Villagers were caught in the middle, and one resident’s uncle was killed by security forces on the suspicion that he was a Maoist.

What ended the Maoist hold on Kondapalli?

1. The forward base: The CRPF announced in November 2024 that it was establishing a forward base in Kondapalli.
2. Encounters: A series of encounters followed, after which the Maoists were pushed into Telangana.
3. Surrender of the formation: The cadre pushed into Telangana laid down arms in March 2026.
4. Village level surrender: A former commander of the Revolutionary People’s Committee surrendered in March 2025 along with 12 other villagers.
5. Rehabilitation in practice: He opened a kirana store with the money received under the State’s rehabilitation policy.
6. Losses in the campaign: A villager’s 18 year old daughter, who left home in December 2022 to join the Maoists, was among about 30 Maoists killed in a security operation in Telangana’s Karregutta hills last year.
7. Scale of the insurgency: The decades long insurgency claimed at least 4,741 lives in the Bastar region alone since 2000.
8. National declaration: The Union Home Minister has declared the country Maoist free, 80 years after Independence.

Which markers of state presence have appeared in the village?

1. Grid electricity: Kondapalli received electricity from the grid last July, after years of solar lamps and then of darkness once those failed.
2. Telecom: A cellphone tower was erected on the edge of the village in December last year, rising above the mud houses and small shops.
3. School building: A new government school building came up in the summer of 2025, painted bright blue and standing by the main road.
4. School capacity: The school runs classes 1 to 8 with 158 students and seven teaching staff, all male, and has blackboards and benches.
5. What preceded it: After the school was burnt down children studied in a shanty in the same compound, and an asbestos shade was put up there in 2020.
6. Anganwadi and residential school: An anganwadi and a residential school are under construction in the village.
7. Panchayat and ration infrastructure: Panchayat bhawans have been built and the new ration shop is painted in the colours of the Tricolour.
8. Identity and banking: Villagers were called to the police camp where they were enrolled under Aadhaar and given birth certificates and bank accounts.
9. Cash transfer: A household bank account opened last year now receives Rs 1,000 from the State under the Mahtari Vandan Yojana for women.
10. Return of the vote: The village voted for the first time last year, in the local body polls, having been told under the Maoists to make no demands of the government.
11. Political visit: The Chhattisgarh Chief Minister visited Kondapalli on 2 June, a first for the village.
12. Announced pipeline: The Bijapur District Collector stated that over the next two years the village will get a cricket ground, a health centre, a cement road and government scheme benefits.
13. Security presence: Security forces now camp in the jungle outside the village where Battalion No. 1 used to camp.
14. Private consumption: A villager bought a Redmi phone for Rs 10,000 after the Maoists left, and uses it to watch films, news and skill tutorials.

How has connectivity changed?

1. Bus service: A blue bus from Cherla in Telangana has run since March 2025 under the State’s rural bus scheme, making two trips a day.
2. What it connects: The bus carries villagers to Bijapur, 79 km to the north, and to Cherla in Telangana, where many young men work as daily wage labourers.
3. The road agency: The Border Roads Organisation began work on the Tarrem to Kondapalli road soon after November 2024.
4. Engineering on the road: On the stretch running past Kondapalli into Telangana, the BRO installed nine Bailey bridges over river streams and 43 precast culverts to keep the road usable during the rains.
5. Present condition: The road is still a work in progress, carrying the occasional motorcycle or truck with construction material.
6. Travel before the road: A circuitous journey of 209 km taking five hours through Cherla was the only way to travel from Bijapur to Kondapalli.
7. Travel now: A 90 minute car ride from Bijapur reaches the village without crossing into Telangana, passing the junctions of Awapalli and Basaguda and reaching Tarrem on the Sukma and Bijapur border.
8. Map lag: For the 18 km beyond Tarrem, Google Maps still recommends the older and longer route through Telangana.
9. What the road replaced: Villagers earlier walked two days to Telangana carrying 30 kg of rice, stayed 45 days and worked plucking chillies on farms.
10. A generation without a bus: The bus stopped after the Maoists came from Telangana in 1985, and an entire generation grew up without ever seeing one.
11. Border geography: Kondapalli sits on the Telangana border and is closer to Cherla at 46 km than to its own district headquarters at Bijapur, 79 km away.

What distances still separate the village from basic services?

1. Health care: The nearest doctor requires a journey of over 30 km to Basaguda.
2. Schooling beyond class 8: Students travel 33 km to Basaguda or 23 km to Pamed to continue past class 8.
3. Higher education: The village’s first graduate could finish his education only by leaving during the Salwa Judum years for a hostel in Basaguda and then a college in Dantewada.
4. A second case of leaving to study: A CRPF recruit from the village completed school while staying in a hostel in Usoor in Bijapur.
5. Schooling in the earlier generation: The village head travelled 27 km by bus to school in Awapalli in the 1980s.
6. Food supply: Villagers earlier travelled to Awapalli even to buy rice, which took a full day.
7. Maternal health: Women died in labour or on the way to hospital because there was no medical facility nearby and no road, and were carried on cots.

Why does the arrival of the state not settle the question of legitimacy?

1. The camp changed hands rather than disappeared: Security forces occupy the same jungle space the Maoist battalion used, so the village still lives beside an armed presence.
2. The demands are the same goods: A surrendered commander now asks the State for a borewell for irrigation, a pond, land rights, small roads and a visiting doctor, which are the goods the Maoists claimed to supply.
3. Memory of redistribution: Residents attribute the Maoists’ trust to land redistribution and help in building houses, which the State’s works now have to match.
4. Memory of being caught in between: Families were punished by both sides, with suspected informers killed by the Maoists and a relative killed by security forces on suspicion.
5. The Salwa Judum legacy: A villager still recalls her father being beaten for hours in 2006 during the Salwa Judum years, and the Supreme Court declared that force illegal in 2011.
6. Delivery remains promised: The health centre, cement road and cricket ground sit on a two year timetable, and the anganwadi and residential school are still under construction.
7. What residents ask for next: Villagers name a health facility, a school for higher studies and a self help group for poultry, farming and other livelihoods as the unmet needs.

Challenges to consolidating state presence in Bastar

1. Reversibility of security gains: Cadre pushed across a State border can regroup and return if camps thin out. e.g. the cadre pushed out of Kondapalli in November 2024 moved into Telangana and laid down arms only in March 2026.
2. Roads reach before services do: Physical connectivity arrives years ahead of health and higher education facilities, so the mortality and dropout risks persist. e.g. Kondapalli residents still travel more than 30 km to Basaguda to see a doctor.
3. Education discontinuity beyond the primary stage: Village schools stop at class 8, so children must migrate to hostels to continue studying. e.g. Kondapalli students travel 33 km to Basaguda or 23 km to Pamed after class 8.
4. Unsettled forest and land rights: Slow recognition of individual and community forest rights leaves the state contested on the very issue the Maoists mobilised on. e.g. community forest rights claims under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 have seen high rejection rates in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar districts.
5. Distrust from past counter insurgency: Civilian militias and killings on suspicion leave a memory that slows cooperation with the administration. e.g. the Supreme Court struck down the Salwa Judum in Nandini Sundar versus State of Chhattisgarh (2011).
6. Livelihood dependence on distant labour markets: Without local employment, better connectivity mainly makes it easier to migrate out. e.g. young men from Kondapalli take the daily bus to Cherla in Telangana for daily wage work.
7. Administrative vacancy in interior blocks: Staffing in remote blocks remains thin even after the security situation improves. e.g. forest officials and the patwari stopped visiting Kondapalli entirely during the Maoist years, and the new school runs with seven teachers for classes 1 to 8.
8. Displacement risk from mining and infrastructure: Newly accessible mineral belts raise the prospect of acquisition in Scheduled Areas without full consent. e.g. protests over iron ore mining in the Bailadila range in Dantewada in 2019.

Conclusion

Kondapalli shows that the end of an insurgency is measured by the return of ordinary state functions, not by the absence of armed cadre. Within two years of the CRPF forward base, the village has a road with nine Bailey bridges, a daily bus, grid electricity, a tower, a school with 158 students, Aadhaar numbers and bank accounts, and it has voted for the first time. The health centre, the cement road and the school for higher studies remain on a two year promise, and the villagers’ claims on the State now decide whether the change holds.

Left Wing Extremism in India

1. About: Left Wing Extremism is an armed movement that seeks to capture state power through a protracted people’s war, drawing on grievances over land, forest rights, displacement and the absence of the administration in tribal districts.
2. Origin: It began with the peasant uprising at Naxalbari in West Bengal in 1967, which gave the movement its popular name.
3. Principal organisation: The Communist Party of India (Maoist) was formed in 2004 by the merger of the People’s War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre of India, and is banned as a terrorist organisation.
4. Armed wing: The People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army is its military formation, organised into platoons, companies and battalions.
5. Geography: Influence was concentrated in the Dandakaranya belt across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
6. Parallel governance: Janatana Sarkars, also called Revolutionary People’s Committees, ran village administration, land distribution and dispute settlement in areas under Maoist control.
7. Scale of decline: The number of districts affected by Left Wing Extremism fell from 126 in 2018 to 38 in April 2024, with the worst affected districts concentrated in the Bastar division.
8. Policy frame: The National Policy and Action Plan of 2015 combines security measures, development, entitlements for tribal groups and perception management.
9. Constitutional position: Police and public order are State subjects, so the Centre acts through central armed police forces, funding and intelligence sharing.

Constitutional Framework Governing Scheduled Areas and Internal Security

1. Article 244 and the Fifth Schedule: Provide for the administration of Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes, including the Governor’s power to modify the application of laws and the Tribes Advisory Council.
2. Article 275(1): Provides grants in aid to States for tribal welfare and for raising the administration of Scheduled Areas to the level of the rest of the State.
3. Article 338A: Establishes the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes to investigate and monitor safeguards for Scheduled Tribes.
4. Article 355: Places on the Union the duty to protect every State against external aggression and internal disturbance.
5. Article 356: Allows a proclamation where the government of a State cannot be carried on in accordance with the Constitution.
6. Entry 1 of the State List: Places public order within the legislative competence of the States.
7. Entry 2 of the State List: Places police within the legislative competence of the States.
8. Entry 2A of the Union List: Covers the deployment of any armed force of the Union in a State in aid of the civil power.

Laws and Rules Governing the Response to Left Wing Extremism

1. Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967: Provides for banning unlawful associations and terrorist organisations and for offences of membership and support.
2. Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2019: Allows the Centre to designate individuals, and not only organisations, as terrorists.
3. Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005: Criminalises membership of and support to organisations declared unlawful within the State.
4. National Investigation Agency Act, 2008: Creates a central agency to investigate scheduled offences including terrorism, with jurisdiction across States.
5. Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996: Extends panchayat provisions to Fifth Schedule areas and vests the gram sabha with control over minor forest produce and consultation before land acquisition.
6. Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006: Recognises individual and community forest rights of forest dwelling tribal groups.
7. Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013: Requires consent, social impact assessment and rehabilitation, with additional safeguards in Scheduled Areas.
8. Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: Section 152 penalises acts endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India.

Back2Basics: Bastar Region

1. Designation: Bastar is an administrative division of southern Chhattisgarh and the core of the Dandakaranya region.
2. Districts: The division covers Bastar, Kondagaon, Narayanpur, Dantewada, Sukma, Bijapur and Kanker.
3. Rivers: The Indravati and the Sabari are the principal rivers of the region.
4. Protected areas: Kanger Valley National Park and the Indravati National Park and Tiger Reserve lie in the division.
5. Landform features: The Chitrakote falls on the Indravati are the widest waterfall in India, and the Abujhmarh hills remain largely unsurveyed.
6. Tribal groups: The Gond, Muria, Madia, Dorla, Halba and Bhatra communities live in the region.
7. Cultural institutions: Bastar Dussehra runs for about 75 days and is among the longest festivals in the country, and the Ghotul is the traditional youth dormitory of the Muria.
8. Mineral base: The Bailadila range in Dantewada holds some of India’s richest iron ore deposits.

Government Initiatives for Left Wing Extremism Affected Areas

1. SAMADHAN doctrine: The Centre’s operational framework combining smart leadership, aggressive strategy, motivation and training, actionable intelligence, dashboards, harnessing technology, action plans for each theatre and denial of financing.
2. Security Related Expenditure Scheme: Reimburses States for the costs of security operations, training, community policing and rehabilitation of surrendered cadre.
3. Special Infrastructure Scheme: Funds fortified police stations, secure camps and district police infrastructure in affected districts.
4. Special Central Assistance: Provides funds for public infrastructure and services in the most affected districts.
5. Road Connectivity Project for Left Wing Extremism Affected Areas: Builds all weather roads and bridges in affected districts, alongside the earlier Road Requirement Plan.
6. LWE Mobile Tower Project: Installs mobile towers in affected districts to close the telecom gap.
7. Civic Action Programme: Funds central armed police forces to run health camps, sports events and welfare activity to build local trust.
8. ROSHNI and Eklavya Model Residential Schools: Provide skill training for youth and residential schooling for tribal children in affected districts.
9. Aspirational Districts Programme: Targets health, nutrition, education and infrastructure indicators in the districts with the weakest outcomes, many of them in the Red Corridor.
10. Niyad Nellanar scheme: A Chhattisgarh programme that saturates villages within a radius of new security camps with central and State scheme benefits.

Key Facts about Left Wing Extremism

1. Naxalbari: The movement takes its name from the 1967 uprising at Naxalbari in Darjeeling district of West Bengal.
2. Formation of the CPI (Maoist): The party was formed on 21 September 2004 and is listed as a terrorist organisation under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
3. Decline in affected districts: Affected districts fell from 126 in 2018 to 38 in April 2024.
4. Salwa Judum: Formed in 2005 and declared illegal by the Supreme Court in 2011 in Nandini Sundar versus State of Chhattisgarh.
5. Specialised forces: The Greyhounds in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and the District Reserve Guard and Bastar Fighters in Chhattisgarh, are the principal anti Maoist units.
6. Stated deadline: The Union government set a target of ending Left Wing Extremism by 31 March 2026.
7. Bastar toll: The insurgency claimed at least 4,741 lives in the Bastar region alone since 2000.
8. Karregutta hills: The hills on the Chhattisgarh and Telangana border were the site of a major operation against Maoist formations.

Challenges in Left Wing Extremism Affected Areas

1. Development deficit that created the grievance: Absence of roads, schools, health centres and electricity is the condition the movement recruited on. e.g. Kondapalli got grid electricity only last July and a cellphone tower only in December.
2. Weak implementation of tribal rights law: PESA and the Forest Rights Act remain unevenly implemented, so consent and forest produce rights stay contested. e.g. community forest rights claims across the Bastar districts have been rejected in large numbers.
3. Displacement from mining and infrastructure: Acquisition in mineral rich Scheduled Areas turns development projects into recruitment arguments. e.g. protests over iron ore mining at Bailadila in Dantewada in 2019.
4. Human rights costs of the security response: Killings on suspicion and civilian militias damage the state’s legitimacy for a generation. e.g. the Supreme Court’s 2011 order disbanding the Salwa Judum and disarming special police officers.
5. Financing of the insurgency: Extortion from contractors, tendu leaf traders and transporters sustains cadre even after territorial losses. e.g. levy collection on road contractors has repeatedly been cited in National Investigation Agency chargesheets.
6. Coordination across State borders: Cadre exploit inter State boundaries where police jurisdiction ends. e.g. the Kondapalli cadre moved into Telangana after the November 2024 encounters.
7. Rehabilitation follow through: Surrender packages fail where no livelihood follows the cash grant. e.g. surrendered cadre in Bijapur depend on small kirana shops set up with one time rehabilitation money.
8. Sustaining services after the camp: Teachers, doctors and revenue officials remain reluctant to serve in interior blocks. e.g. the new Kondapalli school has seven teachers for classes 1 to 8 and no facility beyond that.

Way Forward

1. Saturate cleared villages with entitlements: Extend the saturation model so every village within reach of a new camp receives Aadhaar, bank accounts, ration cards, pensions and scheme benefits within a fixed timeframe.
2. Complete the road and telecom grid: Finish the Tarrem to Kondapalli type links and the mobile tower programme so connectivity does not stop at the camp.
3. Settle forest and land rights first: Clear pending individual and community claims under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and enforce gram sabha consent under PESA before any acquisition.
4. Extend schooling beyond class 8 locally: Upgrade village schools and expand residential schools so children are not forced to migrate 20 to 35 km to continue.
5. Place health infrastructure with the road: Staff sub centres and mobile medical units at the same time as road completion, rather than years later.
6. Build local livelihoods: Fund self help groups, minor forest produce processing and poultry and farming enterprises so connectivity does not only enable outmigration.
7. Make rehabilitation a multi year programme: Follow the surrender grant with skill training, credit and market linkage, and monitor outcomes for surrendered cadre.
8. Institutionalise inter State coordination: Sustain joint operations, shared intelligence and unified surrender policies across Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Odisha, Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS3, 10 marks] The Government of India recently stated that Left Wing Extremism (LWE) will be eliminated by 2026. What do you understand by LWE and how are the people affected by it? What measures have been taken by the government to eliminate LWE?”