Five more LWE-hit Odisha districts declared free from Maoist activities

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Government has approved to remove five more Left Wing Extremism (LWE) hit districts from Centre’s sponsored Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme.

The districts included Angul, Boudh, Sambalpur, Deogarh and Nayagarh.

With removal of SRE district tag, total 11 districts have been assessed to be free from Maoist activities in span of two years largely due to the impact of security response and good governance by the State Government.

The progressive fizzling out of the Maoist influence in the State is an indicative of the growing acceptance by the people to the developmental agenda of the State Govt. and their dis-enchantment towards the obsolete Maoist ideology, Odisha Police stated in a release today.

In April 2018, the naxal SRE district tag was removed from six districts — Jajpur, Dhenkanal, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Gajapati and Ganjam. Those districts were declared as free from Maoist activities.

In 2012, total 19 districts in Odisha had been declared as SRE districts.