Operation Green Hunt flawed in concept, responses worse

This current operation is flawed in overall concept and detail. It predicates itself that you can go to the forest and find Naxals. But Naxals cannot be disposed of in the manner of a hunt. They do not operate in that manner; they do not engage and they vanish. Responses have to emerge out of the overall concept. Operation Green Hunt is flawed in concept and therefore its responses are even more flawed, that is why incidents like the one that took place on Tuesday keeps recurring.

In Tuesday’s incident, the CRPF was returning after days of patrolling; they were carrying heavy loads, which would have drained them off especially in the heat of Chhattisgarh. At 6:30 am, they were probably engaged in their morning ablutions, when they were ambushed. The vehicle sent to rescue them, the anti-mine raker is wrongly termed; it should be called the certain death raker as time and again they have failed in a mine explosion.

If you carry out operations in this manner then you are an idiot. In carrying out largescale operation against Naxals, you have to adopt tactics unique to the situation. There has to be an equivalence between danger and response which has to be constant and continuous. There is an advantage in operating with a force that is less bogged down by set procedures and knows the terrain.

As for the state police, its total strength in Bastar is about 3,500 policemen. There has been an effort to increase the strength. The recruitment has been into battalions, which doesn’t have fixed deployments, and when deployed it is for short period which is not enough to acquaint themselves with the local area. You can’t cover a vast area immediately and simultaneously. There needs to be a considered decision. But that is not happening at all.

(K P S Gill, Ex-advisor , Chhattisgarh)