NEW DELHI: Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government in its third term largely succeeded in dealing and taming elements posing threats to India’s internal security situation in past one year, two deadly terror incidents in Jammu & Kashmir - Reasi pilgrim attack and the devastating Pahalgam massacre – and the continuing ethnic unrest in Manipur still pose serious challenges to deal with.
In case of Left-Wing-Extremism (LWE), the security and intelligence agencies succeeded in keeping the areas affected by the menace under control to make India free of them by March next year, as in the recent past several of the top Naxal leaders were either neutralised in operations or surrendered.
The Modi government completed one year in office yesterday in its unprecedented third term. But this was marked by terror attacks leading to more civilian casualties in comparison to the first years of his two previous terms.
It is a fact that the government’s new doctrinal response, including Operation Sindoor, reflected a determined effort to counter terrorism, but the evolving tactics of highly trained terrorists have raised serious concerns about the nation’s security apparatus.
On June 9, 2024, in Reasi, terrorists attacked a bus carrying pilgrims just minutes before Prime Minister Modi took the oath of office in which nine lives were lost and over 40 injured. The cycle of violence persisted, with security forces facing a series of ambushes by small, highly trained groups of terrorists wielding armour-piercing bullets.
The most significant provocation came on April 22, 2025, with the Pahalgam massacre in the Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam, Anantnag district, in which 26 civilians, including two foreign nationals, were killed. The massacre prompted the launch of ‘Operation Sindoor’, a large-scale counterterrorism operation aimed at neutralising terrorist networks.
South Asia Terrorism Portal, in one of its reports, claimed that 51 civilians lost their lives in terror-related incidents during the first year of Modi’s third term, a significant rise compared to 24 civilian deaths in the first year of his first term (2014-2015) and 33 in the first year of his second term (2019-2020).
This marked the highest civilian toll in the initial year of any of Modi’s terms, raising concerns about the effectiveness of current counterterrorism strategies. Security forces also faced significant losses, with 35 personnel killed in operations during the first year of the third term, down from 51 in the first term and 46 in the second.
Meanwhile, in counter offensives by the security forces 84 terrorists were eliminated, which is a decline from 109 in the first year of the first term and 155 in the second.
Another major internal security concern is LWE-induced violence, but it is on the wane, as this year the number of Naxal-affected districts has reduced from 90 in April 2018 to 38 in April 2025, and the number of most affected districts has also come down from 12 to 6, which include four districts from Chhattisgarh (Bijapur, Kanker, Narayanpur, and Sukma), one from Jharkhand (West Singhbhum) and one from Maharashtra (Gadchiroli).
In recent times, the Naxal movement took a severe blow as its number one leader Nambala Keshav Rao alias Basavaraju, was eliminated along with his entire protection team in one of the longest encounters in Chhattisgarh.
According to officials, the CPI (Maoist) now has only 14 active members, including 4 Polit Bureau leaders. Around a dozen Central Committee members are presently languishing in jail, and three died due to ailments, they added.
The North-East, another internal security theatre, mostly remained violence-free, except for Manipur, where intermittent ethnic clashes continued for almost two years since May 3, 2023, when the first violent incident was reported. So far, 250 people have lost their lives and every effort of the government of India to defuse tension in the state failed to achieve its goal.