How does the rebellion stand now? Former prime minister Manmohan Singh said during his tenure in 2009 that the Maoist insurgency was “the biggest internal security threat” India faced.His government overhauled its strategy to deploy large contingents of paramilitary troops into Maoist hotspots.Many rights groups and activists criticised the approach, citing high levels of collateral deaths among forest-dwelling tribal communities caught between the troops and the insurgents.Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government kept up the sustained counterinsurgency, and the Maoist movement has now been severely depleted.Police in Chhattisgarh told AFP they now estimate the guerrillas to have a fighting strength of 1,000 to 1,200 cadres — a figure impossible to independently verify.But other metrics also suggest the government has the upper hand.The combined number of civilian and security forces deaths in the conflict declined 85 percent between 2010 and last year, figures presented to India’s parliament in March showed.The number of Maoist attacks in a calendar year declined from more than 1,900 to 374 over that period, according to the same data.Security forces killed 287 rebels last year, according to government figures, the highest since 2009.More than 100 others were killed in the first three months of this year.
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