Army Preparing 50000 Jawans to Tackle Naxals

Though there’s no nod from the government, Indian Army has begun preparation for the possibility of being called upon to fight Maoists, said media reports.

According to reports, Army Headquarters has drafted a plan to keep nearly 50000 soldiers – about 5 divisions – in readiness to assist the civilian authorities deal with the growing Naxal threat.

Particularly designed to meet Naxal challenge, a training programme has been drawn up and the Lucknow-based Central Command was given the task of preparing the soldiers for what could potentially be the single-biggest internal mobilisation outside the insurgency-ravaged J&K and the northeast, reports said.

The rigorous training schedule aims to re-orient troops, conditioned to fight hostile nations as well as insurgents of J&K and northeast, for a battle which is to be fought in the heartland and against an enemy adept at blending into the population.

The Army believes that its approach will be radically different from the way paralimitary troops engaged in the anti-Naxal fight have been taken through the paces.

Army officials say that paramilitary forces are engaged in random jungle bashing which is fraught with the risk of collateral damages. As against this, they plan, if and when called in, to create a security grid which would isolate the civilian population from the insurgents.

The anti-Naxal training module focuses on acquiring intimate knowledge of the topography and the tactics used by Maoists. All this would require the sodiers to unlearn many of the lessons imparted to them for conventional warfare, and use tactics different from those in vogue in J&K and northeast.

The Army, which has already identified four senior officers for appointment as security advisors to the worst Naxal-affected states, plans to keep the specially-trained divisions in ‘ready-to-deploy’ condition.

(Based on internet reports)