Terror infrastructure in Pak remains intact: Centre

The government has said the terror infrastructure in Pakistan continues to remain intact and infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir remains unabated with a substantial increase in 2009.

“There are reports to indicate that the infrastructure for training terrorist elements across the border continues to remain intact,” the 2009-10 annual report of the Home Ministry said.

It said the government was firmly committed to thwarting the challenge posed by terrorists and violence sponsored from across the border.

“The available information reveals that the infiltration that consistently decreased since 2005 has reversed in 2009 and increased substantially when compared to 2008,” the report said.

There were 485 attempts of infiltration last year in comparison to 342 in 2008.

Giving an overview of the internal security scenario, the Home Ministry report said, the situation in the country remains largely under control, though violence has increased in terms of number of incidents and casualties of civilians and security personnel, as compared to the corresponding period of 2008.

“In the recent years, the concentration of Left Wing Extremist (LWE) violence has been mainly in the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar, West Bengal and Maharashtra,” the report said.

Left wing extremists operate in the vacuum created by functional inadequacies of field level governance structures, espouse local demands and take advantage of prevalent dissatisfaction and feelings of perceived neglect and injustice among the under-privileged segments of population.

“CPI (Maoist) philosophy of armed struggle to overthrow the Indian state is not acceptable in our Parliamentary democracy and will have to be curbed at any cost. Government has given a call to the Maoist to abjure violence and come for talks. This has not been accepted by them so far,” it said.

While the overall counter action by the affected states in terms of LWEs killed, arrested and surrendered has shown much better results in 2009, there is an urgent need to strengthen police response particularly by Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh by improving actionable intelligence collection and sharing mechanisms and strengthening their police force, the report said.

There were some instances of major agitations during the year, which led to disturbance of public order and disruption of normal life in the affected areas such as the agitation in Andhra Pradesh for and against separate Telangana State and in West Bengal in the context of the demand for a separate Gorkhaland State, it said.