-The Hindustan Times     It is tough to hold elections in the Maoist-hit areas, also known as the Red Corridor, which include parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.   In these areas, holding free and fair elections is just one part of the challenge; the bigger challenge lies in getting ballot boxes, polling officials and security men safely out of the Maoist strongholds once the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Left-wing extremism, which afflicts several states, has killed a whopping 14,689 people, including 11,742 civilians and 2,947 security personnel, since 1980. However, the 4,638 fatal casualties on the Naxalites' side were just one-third of the killings carried out by them over the last three decades. The silver lining, however, is that the trends of Naxal violence are showing a steady decline in killings since 2010. As many...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court's timidity in dealing with the law on prior sanction for prosecuting public servants has offered protection to the murderous and the corrupt While the encounter murders in Pathribal and their cover up are yet another blot on India's record in Kashmir, the legal issues they raise on accountability to the law affect the entire country. They touch the very core of the rule of law that is...

-The Hindu     The killings of Mahendra Karma and his colleagues call not for retributive violence but for a deeper reflection on the discontent among the tribals of central India and their dispossession In the summer of 2006, I had a long conversation with Mahendra Karma, the Chhattisgarh Congress leader who was killed in a terror attack by the Naxalites last week. I was not alone - with me were five other members...

-The Hindu JAGDALPUR: With semi-automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, these soldiers are more than just patrolling arterial village roads. They are in the midst of full-scale battles in which several people, mostly non-combatants, are getting killed. Forces have been mobilised in their thousands; dehydrated soldiers are getting evacuated by the Indian Air Force; corpses are removed in huge tractors meant for transporting farm produce; and Maoists are intensifying coordination at...