India’s Elections and the Maoist Threat

Bibhu Prasad Routray

Asian Conflicts Reports (Monthly bulletin of the Council for Asian Terrorism Research)

Issue 5, May 2009

Despite fears that month-long exercise to elect a new lower house of Indian Parliament would be marked by large-scale Maoist violence, the first two phases of the five-phase election process have passed off relatively peacefully.

On April 16, the first day of the polling, between 58 and 62 per cent of 143 million voters exercised their franchise in 124 constituencies across 15 States and two Union Territories. Considering the fact that this phase of polling covered much of the territory that is significantly affected by Communist Party of India-Maoist violence, attacks were inevitable. However, the toll—eighteen dead—was lower than most experts had anticipated.

The second phase on April 23, held in Maoist affected States such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Orissa saw a dramatic. Stray incidents apart, there was no significant violence; no fatalities were reported. Over 55 percent polling was recorded on that day.

CPI-Maoist’ activities affect 195 of India’s 630 districts, in 16 states. With a cadre strength of nearly 20,000 armed cadres and another 100,000 militia and overground workers backing it up, this left-wing extremist movement has often been described as India’s biggest internal security challenge. An heir to the radical left-wing extremist movements which were born in the state of West Bengal in the 1960s, the CPI-Maoist aims at capturing power by waging a people’s war—a war that made up of a relentless onslaught on every symbol and institution of the state. Unlike its ancestors in West Bengal, the CPI-Maoist has proved resilient. With the exception of Andhra Pradesh, where police have inflicted serious reverses on the movement over the past five years, none of the states affected by the extremists have been able to put together an effective response. An average of 800 fatalities have been reported across the country in left-wing extremist violence during each of past four years.

Prior to the elections, the CPI-Maoist had not only called for a boycott of the poll process but, in the words of Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, had “done all it could do to disrupt the elections.” However, Maoist violence on April 16 succeeded in impacting less than one percent of

the 76,000 polling stations that had been identified as vulnerable to Maoist attack. Moreover, the killings remained confined to just three states—Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Jharkhand, in India’s east, alone accounted for nine fatalities. In the neighbouring state of Chhattisgarh, five poll management staff became unintended victims of a Maoist improvised explosive device. The CPI-Maoist later apologized to the family members of the victims, explaining that its cadre had mistaken the dead civilians to be security force personnel.

Significantly, though, no killings occurred either in the eastern state of Orissa, which is gradually emerging as the new hotbed of Maoist violence, or in neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh, the erstwhile extremist citadel. The lack of violence was also reflected in a reasonable to high turnout of voters in states like Chhattisgarh which recorded 51 percent voting and Andhra Pradesh where 65 percent voters cast their ballot in the first phase. Apart from a few areas, where local grievance against the government combined with Maoist ban on elections to record zero polling, the voting process, across the Maoists were unable to enforce their call for an election boycott.

The 18 deaths, on April 16, however, were sufficient recipe for media outcry. Declaring it the “most violent election” prominent newspapers ran headlines such as “India votes amid bullets, blasts”, “It began with a bang” and “8 cops among 16 dead in Red Rampage”. Little attention, however, was given to the fact that the CPI-Maoist had suffered losses in the run-up to the elections, significantly degrading its capabilities. In two incidents in the state of Bihar, for example, security forces had managed to kill several CPI-Maoist cadres who were involved in attempts to abduct political activists. Moreover, the CPI-Maoist had been unable to execute significant anti-election violence in the build-up to April 16. Bar the killing of a candidate belonging to a non-significant party in Orissa and the detonation of bombs in buildings that were to be used to house poll security personnel, no major attacks took place. Again, on April 22, some 200 Maoist insurgents seized a train for few hours in Bihar. However, they released the train and its passengers some hours before voting began. The ‘train hijack’ incident attracted significant international media attention, but did nothing to deter voters from exercising their franchise.

Tactical Challenges

The polls were held in extremely challenging circumstances, with poll parties often required to trek kilometers inside Maoist-dominated forest areas constantly exposed to attack. The elaborate security cover laid out by the India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and the Election Commission included an alert to the Indian Air Force in central and eastern India, which deployed 25 helicopters for emergency operations; deployment of an additional 50,000 paramilitary forces; and intensified patrols in all sensitive areas.

But the fact that elections were being held in several Maoist violence-hit areas at the same time stretched the security forces available for the task to the limit. The Election Commission later justified holding the polls in all the Maoist affected areas in the first phase, saying that the decision gave the security forces at least three weeks’ time for “area domination” in those areas, a luxury that would not be available if polls in these areas were to be held in separate phases.

In practice, though, the desired level of area domination was not possible because of the nonavailability of adequate number of security forces. Not long ago, in November 2008, presence of 300 paramilitary companies had ensured near zero-violence during the State Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, the State worst affected by Maoist violence. This time around, Chhattisgarh was allotted only 160 additional companies. In Jharkhand, 96 paramilitary companies were provided against a request of about 220 companies. Bihar received 130 companies while it had asked for 260 companies.

The two major military attacks by the Maoists before the elections—on April 10, they killed 10 paramilitary personnel in Chhattisgarh and five more on April 11 in Jharkhand—were, as the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs argued, the consequence of a “pro-active approach adopted by the security forces to foil the designs to disrupt the poll process”. Given the scale of the threat, India’s security forces did reasonably well in defeating the CPI-Maoist’s efforts to sabotage the elections. However, better security planning and management would likely have further reduced the levels of violence.

Cooption and Collusion

The relatively low levels of violence and disruption were, also at least in some cases, the result of need-based political collusion between various candidates and the Maoists, which ensured the absence of attacks in a number of vulnerable polling stations. In remote constituencies of Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, political parties had entered into agreements with the Maoists for a timebound peace.

Little, however, can be read into the gains made by the state or the deliverance of the promise made by the Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram to hold a “peaceful election”. The temporary peace that particular political formations may have purchased during the elections is bound to lapse in quick time. The large-scale mobilization of paramilitary companies for the areas going to the polls will not be available to these States after the elections.

The limited disorders during the polls, thus, are not accurate indices of any significant reverses inflicted on the Maoists by the Indian state in areas where their influence has been the maximum. There has been no dramatic augmentation of capacities on the part of the state and its agencies vis-à-vis the Maoists. Most of the worst affected States continue to dither and squirm at putting together an effective response to the threat of left-wing extremism, despite the striking example of Andhra Pradesh, which five years ago was the worst Maoist affected state, but managed to force the Maoists out of its territory through effective Police action.

Policing in most of the left-wing extremism affected states remains poor and highly inadequate to take on the rampaging extremists. As a result, states remain over-dependent on the paramilitary whose unavailability affects the counter-extremism efforts of the states. The efforts to modernize the police remain tardy and marked by myopic implementation. For example, states have not been able even to spend the funds made available by the central government for police modernization. According to a recent performance audit review of Police modernization across 16 States released by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Maoist-affected States like Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand not only kept 30 to 60 percent of available funds unutilized, but on occasions, diverted them to incur expenses that in no way added to the capacities of their police force.

A new government will assume power in New Delhi in May. It is bound to discover that in spite of the peaceful elections, the threat of the Maoists remains a reality and also a growing challenge that it cannot afford to close its eyes to.