Author: Bhaavna Arora

When Union Home Minister Amit Shah stood in Bastar and set a public deadline — “By March 31, 2026, Naxalism will be wiped out” — the words landed as both a challenge and a measure of policy intent.

Deadlines on insurgency have been issued before; P. Chidambaram famously offered optimistic timeframes in an earlier era, and the problem persisted.

What makes the 2026 pledge different is not bravado alone but a steady accumulation of results on the ground: sustained, intelligence-driven operations that have reclaimed territory; an unprecedented wave of surrenders; and the unraveling of a leadership that once seemed invulnerable.

This article tells that story — the operations, the intelligence architecture behind them, the leaders who fell or surrendered, and the Samad

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