New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has set March 31, 2023 deadline to complete 304 km of road construction under Road Requirement Plan-I (RRP-I) project in the Maoist bastions of Chhattisgarh.
A major portion of The Road Requirement Plan-I (RRP-I), being implemented by the MHA and Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) since 2009 for improving road connectivity in 34 Left Wing Extremist (LWE) affected districts of 8 States, has already completed.
A senior Home Ministry official told ETV Bharat on Friday that 300 km length of roads which are yet to be completed has become a major concern for the government. The 304 km in question falls in the Sukma, Bijapur, and Narayanpur districts of Chhattisgarh.
"Of the total sanctioned 5,362 km road length in LWE affected States, 5,053 km have been completed," the official said.
Of the total length, at least 54 roads with 1,988 km were for Chhattisgarh alone. As many as 1,684 km of roads have been completed in the state, with the remaining area falling under the three aforementioned districts.
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The RRP-I is currently being implemented in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh.
The official said additional central paramilitary forces have been deputed in the adjacent areas of these three districts to complete the road construction project.
A senior official from India's security establishment told ETV Bharat that security forces are opening base camps in remote areas of the districts. In the past few months, at least eight security base camps have been opened in Chhattisgarh.
It was on September 23, 2021, CPI-Maoist cadre of the 'Aamdai area committee' allegedly killed a supervisor and set ablaze four vehicles at a road construction site at Madhonar village in Narayanpur district.
According to the statistics, at least five civilians and 11 security forces personnel were killed in Narayanpur last year.
Similarly, the situation at Sukma and Bijapur are almost the same.
Earlier, reports compiled by security agencies claimed that 3,000 to 10,000 square kilometers of Narayanpur, Bijapur, and Sukma districts fell under the 'liberated area zone of the Maoists.
It was in April last year, an ambush carried out by Maoists at the Sukma-Bijapur border killed as many as 22 security personnel. Nine Maoists were also killed in the process.
The recently concluded 'Chintan Shivir' in Haryana's Surajkund last month saw discussions on the matter, with Chhattisgarh DGP Ashok Juneja briefing the gathering about prevailing conditions in the state.
