Rajnath Singh pulls up IPS officers over war against Naxals

The Union Minister asked states affected by Maoist violence to "take ownership" of the operations launched against the Left extremists, while insisting on effective steps to "choke" their finances.

Union Home minister Rajnath Singh with Bihar CM Nitish kumar, Chhattisgarh CM Raman singh, UP CmYogi Aditya nath, Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik during a meeting with Chief Ministers and other Union Ministers to review the d

NEW DELHI: IPS officers should lead the CRPF from the ground zero and lead by example rather than being ensconced comfortably in their offices in Delhi and other urban centres — this stern message came from Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh during the high-level security review meet with chief ministers and top brass of security establishment of 10 Naxalism-hit States on Monday.

Singh’s warning comes in the wake of inputs with the Home Ministry that IPS officers never lead anti-Naxal operations from the front and leave the job to sub-ordinates. Most IPS officers prefer staying in state capitals of Naxal-hit areas from where the supervision of the operations is not possible.
“The most important thing is that the officers will have to lead from the front. Success in this regard cannot be achieved only by sitting in Delhi, Ranchi or Raipur,” Singh said at the meet, leaving the top IPS brass present in the meeting red-faced.
The cadre officers of the CRPF, the leading anti-Naxal central force in the country, are made to lead the operations without effective supervision from their IPS bosses. This in turn leads to a demoralising effect on the troops.

“There is widespread resentment among the force that IPS officers are not sharing accountability and leaving the force rudderless. The minister was miffed with the systemic problem and directed CRPF’s top brass to look within,” said a senior IB official, who attended the closed-door deliberations.
The Central Zone is responsible for supervising anti-Naxal operations in almost all the Naxal-affected States, but for the last seven years, the special director general/additional director general remained posted at Delhi or Kolkata and the files had to be sent to them for approval. In his speech, the Home Minister also stressed on the need for effective leadership to achieve “desired outcome”. “A leader is the one who makes the impossible possible, converts failure to success and defeat to victory. The key properties of smart leadership are: vision, mission, passion and self-belief,” Singh told the meet.

“To make his team secure, disciplined and victorious, should be of paramount importance for the leader. The success stories of many police officers in India are inscribed in the minds of the common people, as to how they kept their teams alive with energy. On the Left Wing Extremism front, we also need such leadership, who despite adversity, keep their jawans full of enthusiasm and teach them only to win,” the minister said.Underscoring the need for a co-ordinated strategy and plan to counter the Naxals, Singh specifically mentioned the creation of a Unified Co-Ordination and Command Centre to deal with the menace.

Trackers in weapons to fight Naxals

Trackers in weapons and biometrics in smart guns are some of the new technology that the security forces fighting the Naxals may adopt soon to check use oflooted arms by the guerrillas. The idea was floated by Home Minister Rajnath Singh at the meet.