Last Updated:November 29, 2025, 21:37 IST Observers say that ideological indulgence, political sympathy, and institutional sabotage do not help in eradicating a problem as big as Naxalism, as one saw in the UPA days Security personnel pose with recovered arms and ammunition after an encounter with Naxals. (File pic/PTI) The success against Naxals lately is a remarkable story. Affected districts reduced from 180 to just 11, and critically affected to just three, all in Chhattisgarh. Violent incidents down 81%, deaths due to violence down by 85%, and the Naxal-affected area shrinking from 18,000 sq km to 4,200 sq km. Not just this—nearly 600 Naxals have been killed in the last two years, and around 3,000 have surrendered. The end of left-wing extremism seems near, as per Home Minister Amit Shah’s deadline of March 2026. But for someone like this reporter, who covered internal security under the UPA government for almost a decade, things were very different. Yes, in 2009, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had called Naxalism “India’s greatest internal security threat.” It showed the …