Let Us Not Be Too Casual About the Naxal Label: Conduct, Evidence and the Limits of a Category

The Lift Line

The state must be precise about whom it is targeting, for what conduct, and on what evidence. Precision is not a favour granted to critics; it is how a counter-insurgency stays aimed at the people who actually sustain violence.

Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam

Internal security answers usually fail in one of two ways. They either recite operational statistics with no legal frame, or they recite civil liberties with no security frame. This column, written by a former chief minister of Punjab, does the harder thing: it takes the security concern seriously and then asks what the concern translates into as an offence, an ingredient and a burden of proof. That move, from a political description to a statutory element, is exactly what a high-scoring GS3 answer on extremism does, and it is what makes the GS2 rights material usable rather than decorative.

GS Paper 3: Linkages between development and the spread of extremism; challenges to internal security through communication networks; security challenges and their management; role of various security forces and agencies.

GS Paper 2: Fundamental Rights; government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Background and Context

What was said. In the address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the 80th Independence Day, 15 August 2026, the Prime Minister said that armed Naxalism had been decisively weakened, and warned of what he called dimagi Naxals, people with a Maoist mindset who, he said, remained alert to opportunities to create violence and disorder and therefore needed to be identified and isolated. The column records that the Prime Minister did not describe recent youth protests in those terms, and says it would be unfair to attribute such a connection to him.

Why the concern is not rhetorical. An armed movement that loses territory and cadres does not automatically lose the machinery that produced it. Recruitment channels, finance, safe houses, communications, propaganda and logistics can outlast the guns, and every serious counter-insurgency literature treats regeneration as the standing risk of the consolidation phase. The state has both the authority and the duty to prevent quiet re-emergence.

Where the movement stands on the official record. For the necessary background, the Ministry of Home Affairs, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on 29 July 2026, stated that no district is presently categorised as Left Wing Extremism affected. Affected districts had fallen from 126 to 90 in April 2018, 70 in July 2021, 38 in April 2024, 8 in December 2025 and to zero in March or April 2026. Thirty-seven districts are now classed as Legacy and Thrust districts, and one district is retained as a District of Concern. The same reply gives the violence trend since 2021: 361 incidents attributed to Maoists in 2021, 486 in 2023, 375 in 2024, 234 in 2025 and 33 up to 21 July 2026, with six civilian and five security force deaths in that last period.

The policy frame that produced the result. The National Policy and Action Plan to address Left Wing Extremism, approved in 2015, is a whole of government approach combining security measures, development interventions and the securing of rights and entitlements of local communities. The operational doctrine announced on 8 May 2017, SAMADHAN, stands for Smart leadership, Aggressive strategy, Motivation and training, Actionable intelligence, Dashboard based key performance indicators, Harnessing technology, Action plan for each theatre, and No access to financing. The final element, financial choking, is the one that matters most to this argument: it was always the enabling network, not only the cadre, that the strategy targeted.

The legal frame. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, enacted in 2023, came into force on 1 July 2024 and replaced the Indian Penal Code, including its Section 124A on sedition. That provision, colonial in origin, had itself been kept in abeyance along with all proceedings under it by the Supreme Court on 11 May 2022 in S.G. Vombatkere v Union of India. Section 152 of the new Sanhita punishes a person who, purposely or knowingly, excites or attempts to excite secession, armed rebellion or subversive activities, or encourages feelings of separatist activities, or endangers the sovereignty or unity and integrity of India, with imprisonment for life or up to seven years and fine. Its Explanation places outside the offence comments expressing disapprobation of the measures, or administrative or other action, of the Government made with a view to obtaining their alteration by lawful means and without exciting the activities the section prohibits. Against that background, Section 152 is itself under challenge: the Supreme Court issued notice on a petition against it on 8 August 2025.

The Analysis

1. The distinction the piece defends is between conduct and belief, and it is a statutory distinction before it is a moral one. Every offence in this field is built out of an act plus a mental element attached to that act. Financing is an act. Recruiting is an act. Harbouring is an act. Conspiracy is an agreement, which the law treats as an act. A mindset, standing alone, supplies no act, and a category defined by mindset therefore has nothing for a prosecutor to prove or a defendant to answer. That is why the column insists that dimagi Naxal is a political expression, not a legal category. The observation is descriptive, not partisan: no statute in the Indian criminal law contains such a term, and none could without collapsing the act requirement.

2. The law already reaches the network the concern is about. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 does not wait for a bomb. Section 17 punishes raising or providing funds for a terrorist act. Section 18 covers conspiracy, attempt, advocacy, abetment, advice or incitement of a terrorist act or of an act preparatory to it. Section 18B covers recruitment. Section 19 covers voluntary harbouring or concealment of a person known to be a terrorist. Sections 38, 39 and 40 cover membership of, support to and fund-raising for a proscribed terrorist organisation. The Communist Party of India (Maoist), formed on 21 September 2004 by the merger of the People’s War group and the Maoist Communist Centre of India, has been listed as a terrorist organisation under the Act since 22 June 2009. An answer that says the state lacks powers against enablers is simply wrong on the statute book.

3. The courts have already located the line, and located it at incitement. In Shreya Singhal v Union of India (2015) the Supreme Court separated three things that are routinely run together: discussion, advocacy and incitement. Discussion and advocacy of a cause, however unpopular, sit at the heart of Article 19(1)(a); Article 19(2) is engaged only when advocacy becomes incitement, and only where that incitement has a proximate relation to public disorder. The proximity requirement is older still: in Superintendent, Central Prison, Fatehgarh v Ram Manohar Lohia (1960) the Court struck down a provision penalising instigation not to pay public dues, holding that the connection with public order must be real and proximate, not far-fetched or problematical. Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar, decided on 20 January 1962 by a five-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice B.P. Sinha, saved Section 124A only by reading it down to acts involving incitement to violence or an intention or tendency to create public disorder. Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita reproduces that logic in its own Explanation.

4. The membership question is where the case law is genuinely divided, and the division is worth knowing precisely. The background is two decisions on two different provisions. In Thwaha Fasal v Union of India, decided on 28 October 2021, the Court held that mere association with or support for a terrorist organisation does not attract Sections 38 and 39 of the 1967 Act unless the association or support is with an intention to further the organisation’s activities. In a different statutory context, on 24 March 2023, a three-judge Bench in Arup Bhuyan v State of Assam overruled the 2011 decisions in Arup Bhuyan, Raneef and Indra Das, and upheld Section 10(a)(i), under which a person who is and continues to be a member of an association declared unlawful commits an offence. The two lines are reconcilable, because they concern different provisions and different categories of proscribed body, but the reconciliation is the point: liability turns on which section is invoked and what that section requires, not on a general intuition about how sympathetic a person is.

5. The slide the column warns against has a structure worth naming. It runs from evidence, to association, to assumption. Evidence is a documented transaction, a recruitment conversation, a safe house. Association is proximity to someone or something proscribed. Assumption is inference from opinion. Each step is cheaper to establish than the one before it and weaker as proof, which is precisely why an investigative system under pressure drifts down the ladder rather than up it. Naming the ladder is more useful in an answer than deploring the outcome.

6. Vagueness is an operational cost, and this is the argument most candidates miss. The column’s sharpest claim is not about rights at all: a category that cannot be defined cannot be prioritised. Intelligence and investigative capacity are finite. Directed at networks capable of financing, facilitating or organising violence, they suppress regeneration; dispersed across broad ideological scrutiny, they generate volume rather than cases. A security argument for precision is more persuasive in a GS3 answer than a purely rights-based one, and it is available on the facts.

7. Consolidation is a development problem now, not only a policing one. The Ministry of Home Affairs data show the security phase substantially concluded and the state’s own emphasis shifting to saturation of welfare programmes, rehabilitation of surrendered cadres and expansion of governance in remote areas. The column’s closing formulation captures the test better than any statistic: the victory is not that an insurgent no longer carries a rifle, but that a young person no longer believes a rifle is necessary to be heard.

Data and Institutions Vault

Prelims-grade facts:

Left Wing Extremism, the record as of 2026 (Ministry of Home Affairs, 29 July 2026):

• MHA told the Rajya Sabha on 29 July 2026 that no district is presently categorised as Left Wing Extremism affected.
• Affected districts: 126, then 90 in April 2018, 70 in July 2021, 38 in April 2024, 8 in December 2025, zero in March or April 2026.
• 37 districts are now classed as Legacy and Thrust districts; one district is retained as a District of Concern.
• Violence perpetrated by Maoists since 2021: 361 incidents in 2021, 486 in 2023, 375 in 2024, 234 in 2025, and 33 up to 21 July 2026.
• Deaths up to 21 July 2026: six civilians and five security force personnel, against 64 and 36 respectively in 2025.
• Since 2014-15, Rs 3,805.04 crore released to affected states under the Security Related Expenditure scheme; 663 fortified police stations built.

Policy and doctrine:

• The National Policy and Action Plan to address Left Wing Extremism was approved in 2015 on a whole of government approach.
• It combines security measures, development interventions and the securing of rights and entitlements of local communities.
• SAMADHAN was announced on 8 May 2017 at a review meeting of Left Wing Extremism affected states.
• SAMADHAN, first half: Smart leadership, Aggressive strategy, Motivation and training, Actionable intelligence.
• SAMADHAN, second half: Dashboard based KPIs, Harnessing technology, Action plan for each theatre, No access to financing.
• Surrender and rehabilitation: Rs 5 lakh for higher ranked cadres, Rs 2.5 lakh for other cadres, and a stipend of Rs 10,000 a month for three years.

The statutes:

• Section 152, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: exciting secession, armed rebellion, subversive activities or separatist feelings, purposely or knowingly.
• Punishment under Section 152: imprisonment for life, or imprisonment up to seven years, and fine. It is cognizable and non-bailable.
• The Explanation to Section 152 exempts comments seeking alteration of Government measures or administrative action by lawful means.
• The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, enacted in 2023, came into force on 1 July 2024, replacing the Indian Penal Code and its Section 124A.
• Section 113 BNS defines the terrorist act; an officer not below the rank of Superintendent of Police decides between Section 113 and the UAPA.
• Article 19(2) allows reasonable restrictions on eight grounds; sovereignty and integrity of India was added by the Sixteenth Amendment, 1963.

The UAPA offences of enabling:

• Section 17: raising or providing funds for a terrorist act, minimum five years, extendable to imprisonment for life.
• Section 18: conspiracy, attempt, advocacy, abetment, advice or incitement of a terrorist act or of an act preparatory to it.
• Section 18B: recruiting any person for a terrorist act. Section 19: voluntarily harbouring or concealing a person known to be a terrorist.
• Sections 38, 39 and 40: membership of, support to and raising funds for a terrorist organisation, each needing intention to further its activities.
• CPI (Maoist) was formed on 21 September 2004 by the merger of the People’s War group and the Maoist Communist Centre of India.
• CPI (Maoist) was listed as a terrorist organisation under the UAPA on 22 June 2009.

The cases, the historical line:

• Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar, AIR 1962 SC 955 (20 January 1962): five-judge Bench read Section 124A down to incitement to violence or a tendency to disorder.
• Superintendent, Central Prison, Fatehgarh v Ram Manohar Lohia (1960): the link with public order must be real and proximate, not far-fetched or problematical.
• Shreya Singhal v Union of India (2015) 5 SCC 1: discussion, advocacy and incitement are distinct; only incitement engages Article 19(2). Section 66A struck down.
• Terrorist-organisation context, Thwaha Fasal v Union of India, 28 October 2021: support needs an intention to further the group’s activities.
• Unlawful-association context, Arup Bhuyan v State of Assam, 24 March 2023: three-judge Bench upheld UAPA Section 10(a)(i) on continued membership.
• Background: in S.G. Vombatkere v Union of India, 11 May 2022, Section 124A IPC and all proceedings under it were kept in abeyance.
• Background: the Supreme Court issued notice on a petition challenging Section 152 of the Sanhita on 8 August 2025.

⚠️ Watch the trap: Two Supreme Court lines on membership are constantly conflated. Thwaha Fasal (2021) concerns Sections 38 and 39 of the UAPA, which deal with a terrorist organisation and require an intention to further its activities. Arup Bhuyan (2023) concerns Section 10(a)(i), which deals with an unlawful association and makes continued membership itself an offence. A question that asks whether “mere membership” is punishable has no single correct answer until the provision and the category of proscribed body are specified. A second trap sits in the district data: as of 29 July 2026 the correct answer is that no district is categorised as LWE affected, with 37 Legacy and Thrust districts and one District of Concern, so any option repeating an older count such as 38 or 8 is testing whether the candidate has updated.

The Debate

FOR (the state must act on networks, and preventive reach is legitimate): Insurgency is a support system before it is a firefight. Finance, recruitment, shelter, communications and propaganda are its load-bearing components, and a state that waits for violence to materialise before acting has already lost the initiative. Preventive offences over conspiracy, recruitment, harbouring and financing exist for exactly this reason, and history in India and elsewhere shows that armed movements have regenerated from intact support structures after their cadres were degraded. Complacency after a military success is the standard error of the consolidation phase.

AGAINST (a category defined by mindset cannot bear criminal weight, and costs security): Criminal liability in India is built on an act and a mental element attached to that act, and the courts have located the constitutional line at incitement with a proximate relation to disorder, not at opinion. A category defined by presumed thought supplies nothing to prove and no defence to meet, which invites investigative drift from evidence to association to assumption. It also misallocates finite capacity: broad ideological scrutiny generates case volume rather than convictions, while the financing and logistics networks that actually determine regeneration receive less attention than they should.

Balanced verdict: These are not opposing conclusions so much as opposing emphases, and the statute book already contains the reconciliation. Every enabler the first position is worried about is reachable under a named offence with named ingredients: financing, recruitment, harbouring, conspiracy, support with intention to further. The discipline the second position demands is simply that the state should charge those offences and prove them, rather than operate through an adjective. Firmness and precision are complements here, and the strongest way to state that in an answer is as a security proposition rather than only a rights one.

How to Think About This

When a political phrase enters the internal security debate, run it through three questions in order, and answer them in that order.

First, what conduct does the phrase describe? Convert it into acts a witness could observe or a document could record. If nothing survives the conversion, the phrase is a description of belief and cannot become a charge.

Second, which existing provision already covers that conduct, and what does the provision require? Almost always the answer is that a provision exists, and the real question is the ingredient the prosecution must prove: knowledge, intention to further, a proximate link to disorder. Naming the ingredient is what separates a legal answer from a commentary.

Third, what does imprecision cost operationally? A rights argument and a security argument point the same way more often than answers assume, and the security version of the argument is the more persuasive one in a GS3 paper because it is stated in the examiner’s own frame: finite capacity, prioritisation, and the risk of regeneration.

Applied here, the conduct is financing, recruiting, harbouring, conspiring and materially supporting; the provisions are Sections 17, 18, 18B, 19, 38, 39 and 40 of the 1967 Act and Sections 113 and 152 of the 2023 Sanhita; and the cost of imprecision is attention diverted from the networks that decide whether an insurgency can come back.

Diagram-in-Words

Takeaway Box

Lift line: The state must be precise about whom it is targeting, for what conduct, and on what evidence. Precision is not a favour granted to critics; it is how a counter-insurgency stays aimed at the people who actually sustain violence.

Prelims hooks: No district categorised as LWE affected as on 29 July 2026; 126 to 90 in April 2018, 70 in July 2021, 38 in April 2024, 8 in December 2025, zero in March or April 2026; 37 Legacy and Thrust districts and one District of Concern; National Policy and Action Plan 2015; SAMADHAN, 8 May 2017; Section 152 BNS and its Explanation; BNS in force 1 July 2024; UAPA Sections 17, 18, 18B, 19, 38, 39, 40; CPI (Maoist) formed 21 September 2004, proscribed 22 June 2009; Kedar Nath Singh 1962; Ram Manohar Lohia 1960; Shreya Singhal 2015; Thwaha Fasal 2021; Arup Bhuyan 2023.

Mains keywords: conduct versus belief, act and mental element, advocacy and incitement, proximate link to public order, material support, financial choking, whole of government approach, consolidation phase, regeneration risk, security plus development.

Ethics and interview angle: A security officer is asked to prepare a watch list based on stated opinions rather than on any recorded act. What is the ethical and legal basis for declining, and what alternative would serve the same security objective better?

PYQ linkage: Connects to past UPSC Mains questions on the linkages between development and the spread of extremism, on the effectiveness of the government’s strategy in Left Wing Extremism affected areas, and on the balance between national security legislation and fundamental rights.

Sources: Hindustan Times, PIB, Ministry of Home Affairs

Source: Let Us Not Be Too Casual About the Naxal Label: Conduct, Evidence and the Limits of a Category — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Editorial Analysis