Bhubaneswar (Kalinga Voice) : Odisha Govt. decides to remove five districts from naxal SRE district TAG. Odisha has experienced the scourge of Left Wing Extremism for more than three decades. In 2012, 19 as declared as SRE district. Robust security response as well as focused developmental activities have brought about a turn around in the situation in the State especially in the last few years.
In April 2018, six districts i.e. Jajpur, Dhenkanal, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Gajapati and Ganjam were declared as free from Maoist activities and those districts were removed from the Central Govt. sponsored Security Related Expenditure (SRE) Scheme, a scheme exclusively meant for capacity building for Maoist affected Districts.
Now, the State Govt. have approved to remove five districts, namely, Angul, Boudh, Sambalpur, Deogarh and Nayagarh from the SRE scheme. Thus, eleven districts have so far been assessed to be free of Maoist activities in a span of two years, largely due to the impact of security response and good governance by the State Government.
The progressive fizzling out of the Maoist influence in the state is an indicative of the growing acceptance by the people to the developmental agenda of the State Govt. and their dis-enchantment towards the obsolete Maoist ideology.
