New Delhi: Much lesser security men have lost their lives under the Narendra Modi government as compared to five years of the UPA government between 2009-2014. They have also managed to eliminate more left extremists under naxal operations. This revelation was made in an RTI which showed almost one-third of soldiers were killed in naxal attacks in the last five years of Modi as Prime Minister as compared to the Manmohan Singh led government.  

The RTI reply by the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) Division, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, shows that as many as 862 security men were killed from 2009 to 2013. It may be noted that the UPA government was in power till May 2014 after which Narendra Modi became the prime minister. The highest number of security men killed in 2009 was 287 followed by 262 men in 2010 and 112 in 2011.

While this number came down to the death of 263 men between 2014 and January 2019.  2017 was the worst year during the Modi regime as 56 jawans lost their lives while combating naxals. However, these numbers were relatively low in 2015 and 2016 with deaths of 34 and 40 jawans respectively. Noida based activist Ranjan Tomar filed the RTI.

“The data is quite encouraging as security forces managed to combat left extremists with lesser causality. The credit can be given to Modi government for his zero-tolerance policy against any extremist groups,” Ranjan Tomar told MyNation.  

The data by the Home Ministry shows that the Modi government has also succeeded in controlling the number of naxal attacks and eliminating them. As per the data revealed through an RTI earlier filed by Tomar, it shows that between May 2014 and January 2019 as many as 4,614 naxal attacks incidents took place in which 715 left extremists were killed. This number was as high as 6,953 naxal attack incidents between 2010 and April 2014, when UPA was in power. During this period security forces managed to kill only 475 naxals.

The maximum extremists – 225 — were eliminated in 2018, followed by 2016 (222), 2010 (172) and 2017 (136), according to the reply under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

The affected states from naxal attack incidents include Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.