Modi’s Diwali in Bastar: first with every district free of Naxalism, PM tells jawans; Telangana and Andhra Pradesh lists cleared by 2025

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spent Diwali in Bastar on Sunday, 8 November, handing out sweets to security personnel at the CoBRA Operations Base in Karanpur, Chhattisgarh. He told them it was the first Diwali in which every district of India was free of Naxalism. Forces trained at the base and set out from it against Maoists in Bastar and Abujhmad.

Modi pointed to one figure: in the last 12 months, he said, no CRPF jawan had been killed on duty, something that had not happened in 47 years. He recalled a time when Naxalism reached more than 230 districts in about 20 states, with up to 2,000 attacks a year, and two attacks in Dantewada in 2010 that killed 76 CRPF men in one and 44 civilians in the other.

He listed roads running to more than 15,000 km, upwards of 9,500 mobile towers, about 175 Eklavya schools and around 50 ITIs built in those areas. Armed Maoists, he said, are no longer in those forests.

Telangana’s six districts, Andhra’s five

In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on 29 July, the Home Ministry named six affected Telangana districts in 2021: Adilabad, Bhadradri-Kothagudem, Jayashankar-Bhupalpally, Komaram Bheem, Mancherial and Mulugu. By 2024 only Bhadradri-Kothagudem and Mulugu were left. Andhra Pradesh’s five in 2021, East Godavari, Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and West Godavari, had shrunk to Alluri Sitarama Raju alone by 2024. By 2025 neither state had a district on the list.

Telangana recorded eight Maoist incidents and three civilian deaths in 2024, seven incidents and one death in 2025, and two incidents without deaths in 2026 up to 21 July. Andhra Pradesh has had none since a single incident in 2024. Nationally, the count for 2026 up to 21 July was 33 incidents and 11 deaths, five of them security personnel.

One of the biggest operations ran along Telangana’s border. In 21 encounters over 21 days from 21 April 2025, Chhattisgarh Police and central forces found the bodies of 31 Maoists and 35 weapons on the Karreguttalu hills between Bijapur and Mulugu. The ministry said at the time that the dead might include cadres of the Maoists’ Telangana State Committee.

Camps become service centres

The Centre fixed 31 March 2026 as its deadline in August 2024 and says it was met; no district has been classed as affected since March-April 2026. One in three security camps in areas cleared of Maoists is being turned into a Jan Suvidha Kendra offering skill training, government schemes, digital services and health care. The first has opened at Netanar, Jagdalpur, in Bastar.