Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday has claimed that insurgency in Northeastern states of India has come down by more than 75 per cent since National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power. He also said that this is the reason why NDA has been voted to power in most of the Northeastern states.
Speaking at News 18’s Rising India Summit at New Delhi on Saturday, Singh said, “When we came to power at the centre in the year 2014, insurgency was a very big problem in the Northeast. There was this group called National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit) which had terrorised people in Assam. Few months after we took charge, NDFB (S) carried out a gruesome massacre where they killed sixty two tribals. I immediately went to the place and took some tough decisions to counter the challenge posed by NDFB. Now, thanks to our jawans and officials, we have been able to successfully eliminate the threats from NDFB (S) to a large extent.”
“This is one of the main reasons why NDA has been brought to power in most of the Northeastern states. We have brought peace and stability to the region” the Home Minister said.
It may be mentioned that in December 2014, NDFB (S) killed seventy six people in a series of attacks which took place in Chirang, Sonitpur and Kokrajhar. On December 26, 2014, the Indian Government declared that they had launched ‘Operation All Out’ to eliminate the Bodo militants. This was declared by the Chief of the Army Staff, General Dalbir Singh Suhag, after meeting UnionHome Minister Rajnath Singh. About 5,000 personnel from the paramilitary CRPF and 4,620 from the Indian Army were deployed and were ordered to eliminate the remaining militants, who are estimated to number around 80. In addition, around 2,000 personnel from the border force Sashastra Seema Bal were deployed to help maintain stability.
It is said that ‘Operation All Out’ weakened NDFB (S) to a large extent forcing their main leader to flee from the country. Except the incident at Kokrajhar where fourteen people at a market place were gunned down by suspected NDFB (S) militants, no attack of a big scale has taken place during NDA regime.