Monday, November 28 2005 16:20 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: The Government has been extending all possible help to the Naxal-affected states which includes raising up of additional battalions with a higher funding from the Centre to fight the menace, Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal announced in the Lok Sabha today(Nov 28, 2005).

Making a statement on the Jehanabad issue, Jaiswal said that besides this, the Government has set up mechanism to bring about greater coordination among the Naxal affected states and Union Home Secretary regularly coordinates with states to counter the problem.

The Minister said the State Government had informed that there were intelligence inputs about the movement of Naxalities in certain areas of Jehanabad district which indicated apprehension of Naxal attacks on a railway station, police patrol and a police station.

He said out of the 389 prisoners who escaped from the sub-divisional jail on November 11, as many as 222 had returned so far.

He said that as many as 20 Naxalities had been arrested from Jehanabad and other districts where operations are being carried out. The Center was constantly monitoring the situation and four companies of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and two companies of Rapid Action Force (RAF) were deployed immediately after the attack.

In addition, five companies of Border Security Force (BSF) have been kept ready for any emergent requirements and two teams of elite National Security Guards had been stationed at Patna and Gaya for need based operations, the statement said, adding two MI-17 helicopters had also been placed at the disposal of the Bihar Government.

The statement said that till the end of the October this year, Naxal violence remained almost at same level with a few major incidents taking place in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh.

In the wake of Jehanabad incident, the Center has also advised all the Naxal-affected states to review and strengthen the security arrangement for safeguarding the armories and jails so as to rule out recurrence of such incidents.

The Bihar Government has already constituted a two-member team, which would go into the Jehanabad attack and would submit its report by the end of this month.

The Government remains committed to combating the Naxal problem through a multi-pronged approach on political, security and developmental fronts.

The statement said that the Government was also willing to further supplement the efforts of the state Governments in undertaking more focused, sustained and intensified anti-Naxalite operations against the Naxals and their infrastructure.