C'garh: Bastar cops launch drive to counter Naxal propaganda

The Bastar police in Chhattisgarh on Tuesday launched a campaign to counter Maoist propaganda in the region and to expose the outlawed movement's anti- development face and violent ways, a senior official said.

The Bastar police in Chhattisgarh on Tuesday launched a campaign to counter Maoist propaganda in the region and to expose the outlawed movement's anti- development face and violent ways, a senior official said. The drive, called'Bastar tha matta' and 'Bastar cho awaaz' in Gondi and Halbi dialects respectively, meaning 'voices of Bastar', will see police use posters, short films, audio clips and other popular methodologies to highlight Maoist atrocities, he said.

"Addressing challenges of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) is on top of the priority list of Bastar police for the last two decades. Over these years, the local police with the help of central paramilitary forces like CRPF, BSF, ITBP and SSB have made deep inroads into erstwhile strongholds of CPI (Maoist)," Inspector General of Police (Bastar range) Sundarraj P said. The popular three-pronged strategy, namely 'Vishwas, Vikas and Suraksha' (trust, development and security), of the security forces has yielded positive results in Bastar, he said.

"In addition to the ongoing offensive operations against the red guerrillas, there is strong need to expose the real and ugly face of the Maoists. For that, we have launched this counter-propaganda psyops (psychological operations) against Maoist misdeeds," he said. Bastar police will wage a high-intensity campaign against the anti-tribal and anti-developmental activities of the Naxals through this initiative, he said.

Contents in Gondi, Halbi and other tribal dialects, widely spoken in the region, would be mainly used in posters, audio clips and short films under this campaign so that locals could easily understand it, he said. The campaign will also reflect emotions and sentiments of the Bastar people to the outside world, he added.

The IG said this initiative would make Naxal ultras realise how they have been misguided and used by their senior leaders. One of the posters, which terms the Naxals as "Maoist mafia", has an illustration of the anti-development stand of a senior cadre while talking to his subordinate.

The campaign will be carried out in all seven district of Bastar division.

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