The Union home ministry has prepared new Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all Central and state security forces engaged in anti-Naxal operations in the country. The fresh SOPs have been evolved after taking the views of the Indian Army, security brass and other experts. Elaborating on pre-deployment tactics in LWE
areas, the SOPs suggest that the area of deployment for anti-Naxal operations may be declared as a disturbed area to give sufficient legal protection to forces operating in the disturbed areas — an oblique reference to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958.
The SOPs, being put in place after the brutal Maoist ambush that killed 76 CRPF jawans in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh, suggest that the minimum level of deployment should be 3-5 battalions under a DIG level officer. It says that deployment in remote and far-flung areas should be covered by air observation.
To avoid ambush situations, the security forces should initially be deployed in the “less threatened’’ areas to familiarise themselves and gradually the troops should be deployed in sensitive and hyper sensitive areas. “In the hyper-sensitive areas, the force should be deployed very close to the known areas in larger numbers,” an official said. The SOPs will ask states to allow inter-state movement of troops for operations, which will be planned by the CPMFs in consultation with the local police and executed “jointly or independently’’.
The SOPs have stressed on a “one-month’’ pre-induction training for the Central paramilitary forces and state police units being inducted in anti-LWE operations on jungle warfare besides briefing them on subjects related to CI operations. It says that before Central troops are dispatched to states, teams of intelligence officials should be organised and sent to the state of deployment to have a close liaison with Special Branch and Intelligence Bureau to facilitate safe movement of troops.
SOPs suggest that a “nodal office’’ should be established “fifteen days’’ prior to the induction of troops.