Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said here on Wednesday that 20 counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism schools would be set up in the naxal-affected States. He was talking to reporters after a meeting of the Chief Ministers of the affected States.
The meeting approved raising 34 new battalions of the India Reserve Battalion (IRB) for combating Maoists. The States were asked to fill up around 97,000 vacancies in the police forces. The authorities required a large number of helicopters to help the forces on the ground, but only 20 additional copters could be obtained from the Air Force, which is pulling out some of them from United Nations' duties.
Asked about his plan of “revisiting'' the deployment of the Central forces depending upon operational or developmental needs, he said the deployment of paramilitary forces was revisited in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa. The common demand of the Naxal-affected States at the meeting was inclusion of more districts on the list of 35 taken up for focussed development. They wanted extension of the scheme for reimbursement of Security Related Expenditure to more than the present 83 districts.
