Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Sunday said his government was working hard to curb the Naxal menace in the state and usher in development in its rebel-hit areas.
Speaking during a meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi, Chouhan also said that the state police have killed seven Naxals and arrested three others in the last three years, according to a statement issued by the MP government.
A total of 12 lakh workers have been paid Rs 802 crore in the Maoist-hit area in Madhya Pradesh during the last fiscal, the CM was quoted as saying.
Chouhan said that Rs 375 crore has been spent on developing infrastructure in the rebel-hit areas of the state over the last five years, it added.
During the meeting, the MP chief minister also said money was being spent on a large scale for the development, with a special focus on the tribal population in the Naxal-hit Balaghat, Mandla and Dindori districts.
Addressing chief ministers, state ministers and top officials of 10 Naxal-hit states, Shah said that the fight against the Maoists has now reached its final phase and it needs to be accelerated and made decisive.
Shah urged the chief ministers of Naxal-affected states to give priority to addressing the menace so that it can be eradicated within a year and sought a joint strategy to choke the flow of funds to the red ultras.
Apart from Chouhan, the chief ministers who attended the meeting were Naveen Patnaik (Odisha), K Chandrashekar Rao (Telangana), Nitish Kumar (Bihar), Uddhav Thackeray (Maharashtra) and Hemant Soren (Jharkhand).
However, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Bhupesh Baghel of Chhattisgarh, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan skipped the meeting.