Union home minister Amit Shah on Monday assured that the battle against the Maoists will be intensified and “we will win it in the end,” two days after an attack by the Maoists in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, in which at least 22 security personnel lost their lives.
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“On behalf of the Prime Minister, central government and the country, I pay tributes to the security personnel who lost their lives in the Maoist attack. The country will always remember their sacrifice for taking this fight to a decisive turn,” Shah said, according to news agency ANI. The home minister was speaking to the media after chairing a review meeting with Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and senior officers after arriving in Jagdalpur on Monday morning.
“In the past few years, the fight against Maoists has reached a decisive turn and this unfortunate incident has taken this fight two steps forwards,” Shah said, adding that in the review meeting, the officers said that the fight shouldn’t weaken, which, he remarked, shows that the “morale of our jawans is intact.”
The home minister linked the bloody Maoist attack to the security forces' success over the last few years in making inroads into the densely forested Bastar region, underlining that this had unnerved the Maoists who carried out Saturday’s attack.
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Both Shah and Baghel were in the northeastern state of Assam, campaigning for their respective parties for the ongoing assembly elections when the attack took place. On Sunday, Shah rushed back to Delhi, while Baghel returned to Raipur, the state capital.
In Jagdalpur, they paid tributes to the personnel killed in action. Later in the day, Shah will meet the injured jawans at a hospital in Raipur.