Gouri Kudiyam, 30, remembers her husband Anil Punem fondly. They met on the job in the dense forests of Bijapur in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district and married in 2022. They had trekked, cooked, and faced bullets together. Until 2025, when Punem was killed in an encounter with security forces. On January 15 this year, Kudiyam, like hundreds of other Maoist cadres, surrendered before the police. All Kudiyam has of Punem is a photograph from their wedding day, saved as her phone’s wallpaper.

“We could marry but not have children. All the cadres had to undergo vasectomy on the instructions of senior leaders,” she says. She thinks back to what made her join the Maoists: “I was impressed by their dancing and singing troupes. I joined them when I was 16.”

Three months on, Kudiyam is learning to operate a sewing machine, under an initiative by the Chhattisgarh government. Her first project: stitching a woman’s kurta at a garment factory in Bijapur. Kudiyam is among 2,762 Maoist rebels who have surrendered before government authorities since 2024 in Chhattisgarh. Since 2005, there have been 8,477 surrenders in the State. Across India, 4,839 cadres have surrendered since 2024, according to Home Minister Amit Shah’s speech in the Lok Sabha on March 30.

Since last year, he has been reiterating that the end of March 2026 would see the last of the Maoists. There have been 2,218 Maoist arrests over the past two years. Chhattisgarh has been one of the worst affected States due to left-wing extremism. “I have gone to Bastar and said on public platforms more than 50 times that the Maoists should lay down their arms and the government will make complete arrangements for their rehabilitation… the government’s policy is clear: dialogue is held only with those who surrender their weapons, but those who fire bullets are answered with bullets,” he said.

The armed movement started in West Bengal’s Naxalbari, with a peasant uprising in 1967 against the feudal system of landownership and exploitation that came with it. Mixed with some elements of communism, it spread across India’s peninsular States, also taking up the cause of traditionally tribal lands being used for mining

Losing heads

For hundreds like Kudiyam, the Chhattisgarh government and the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) have come up with a surrender and rehabilitation scheme, which provides skill training, a monthly stipend, and a fixed amount of money, which they can claim after three years.

A surrendered Maoist is entitled to ₹50,000, and ₹1 lakh for unmarried or widowed Maoists if they marry within three years. There is also an “encouragement amount” for a surrendered weapon: ₹5 lakh for a light machine gun, ₹4 lakh for an AK-47 rifle, and ₹2 lakh for Insas or a self-loading rifle.

A surrendered Maoist carrying a reward of ₹5 lakh or more will be allotted a maximum of 4 decimal (1,742 sq. ft) land in an urban area, or a maximum of 1 hectare of agricultural land in rural areas. The Chhattisgarh government also offers an incentive of ₹15,000 if the person helps in seizure of an improvised explosive device (IED) weighing 5 kg or more, and ₹25,000 on seizure of an IED weighing 10 kg or more.

However, the incentives were not the reason Kudiyam surrendered. “My job was to assist the leadership in holding public hearings in villages. I surrendered because the top leadership was killed, arrested, or had surrendered,” she says, claiming that she has never fired a bullet.

Chandraiyya alias Papa Rao, a senior Maoist commander, gives the same reason for laying down of arms: collapse of the senior leadership of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). Rao had a reward of ₹25 lakh on his head. On March 24, he and 18 others surrendered. “It started with Basavaraju’s killing (May 21, 2025) in Narayanpur. Our network was broken. We could not move from one place to another, we were trapped, so we decided to surrender,” he says.

The 42,000-sq-km Bastar area has been among the worst left-wing-extremism-affected regions of India. According to Sundarraj. P., Inspector General, Bastar, the death of CPI(Maoist) general secretary Nambala Keshav Rao alias Basavaraju, 70, in Narayanpur district was a “game changer” in decimating the Maoist network in the region. Basavaraju took over as the leader of the group in 2017-18, replacing Mullapalla Rao alias Ganapathi, who is said to be in his 80s and not active. Papa Rao says he last met him in 2016.

After Basavaraju’s killing, at least nine central committee members, the highest decision-making body of the CPI(Maoist) were killed in encounters in Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Jharkhand. Ten others were arrested.

A Maoist recession

On March 30, Mr. Shah announced in the Lok Sabha that barring two districts, Bijapur in Chhattisgarh and West Singhbhum in Jharkhand, with diminished presence of Maoists, India was now “Naxal-free”. The number of LWE-affected districts in the country in 2013 were 126 and the ‘Red Corridor’ was spread across the States of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha. On March 26, the MHA re-categorised LWE-affected districts, replacing the earlier classification of “most affected” with “LWE affected”, “districts of concern”, and “legacy and thrust districts”, 38 districts in all.

Anti-Maoist operations have continued since 2008-09, after then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh termed it the “gravest internal security challenge” in India. Operations were intensified from 2021, when 406 new Central Armed Police Force (CAPFs) camps were established in “core areas”.

Most of these places were earlier inaccessible to the administration and the security vacuum had led the Maoists to run a parallel administration, Mr. Sundarraj says. The opening of the camps was followed by construction of roads, schools, and public distribution system shops.

Mr. Shah said since 2014, approval has been given for constructing 17,589 km of roads in Maoism-affected areas, out of which 12,000 km have already been built, and nearly 5,000 mobile towers have been installed. This was the year the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power.

Development zone

As road connectivity improves, mining activity has also gathered pace. Hundreds of trucks ply on the roads between Narayanpur and Bijapur. A police official says, “Till two years ago, plying of such a huge number of trucks, that too after 4 p.m. during the day, was unthinkable.”

The Opposition Congress on December 16, 2025, alleged in the Chhattisgarh Assembly that the State’s Vishnu Deo Sai-led BJP government was working for the benefit of industrialists and capitalists. They said there was now unprecedented deforestation in the State and opposed the grant of mining contracts to private companies.

At Kacchapal village in Narayanpur district, which falls under the Abujhmad area and was considered to be ‘the capital of the Maoists’, a road reached for the first time in 2025.

There are 24 families in the village. Three families, which had to flee their homes due to the fear of Maoists, returned a few months ago, taking the total number of houses to 27.

A flurry of construction activity is on in the village. The foundation of a public distribution system (PDS) shop is being laid; road-cutting is on. The road will eventually connect the cluster to a national highway, further on to Gadchiroli in Maharashtra. Villagers say earlier, paths would be rigged with IEDs. Locals say mobile connectivity reached here for the first time last year.

They also say the administration was absent in the village, except for a dilapidated panchayat bhavan. This was given a facelift in 2025. Raj Kumari Nuriti, sarpanch of the village, says she could not stay here for fear of the Maoists. “I used to live in Narayanpur town. They did not let us construct the road. Many of them were from our village,” she said..

The same year a Border Security Force (BSF) camp was built up at Irakbhatti, near the village. A police official says the camp was attacked by Maoists. The only sign of a functional institutional presence here is a sprawling Ramkrishna Mission ashram that first opened in the village in 1998. Through the period of violence, the ashram was never harmed by the Maoists.

A primary school, which operates from a prefabricated structure, started functioning in November 2025. Till now, all students used to go to the school run by the ashram, which explains the fluent Hindi spoken by villagers, where the first language is Madiya, a tribal dialect.

Taleshwari Pujari, principal of the school who commutes daily from Narayanpur town, 60 km away, says the school has six students who study in Classes 1 and 2.

“Most students here go to the ashram. We are running from a temporary structure, but we will soon get a proper building. A school existed here till 1986. We are teaching students Hindi, basic maths. The students could not read or write; now we see an improvement in their learning curve. Earlier, they used to run away on seeing us, so we had to bring them back,” Pujari said.

People stand under a tree in front of the panchayat bhavan talking. Jaisuram Varda says villagers were torn between the Maoists and security forces. “Both accused us of being informers. We were thrashed by both. The police said we provide food and support to Maoists. Since last year, we have been able to move freely. The construction activity ensures some employment for us,” he said.

Another villager, Chandrika Vadde, points to her house built under the Pradhan Mantri Janman Awas Yojana, a Central government scheme that provides for a housing subsidy to residents of Maoism-prone areas. “They have painted the walls from the outside, but inside the walls are bare, all bricks and cement. The rooms are so small. How can one live here?” Vadde said.

Sonu Ram Achla, a farmer whose brother joined the Maoists, says though the ashram provides basic medical facilities, for any serious treatment, they had to travel on foot to the nearest town, which took almost a day.

Villagers say they require clean drinking water. Solar-powered water tanks have been installed in the village but potable water hardly reaches their homes, a villager complains. He adds that in the past, three villagers were killed by Maoists for being “police informers”.

Mixed feelings

Some of the surrendered Maoist cadres also helped the security forces in identifying the core operational areas of the armed group. “After Basavaraju was killed, we wanted to ensure that it’s him, since we did not have his latest photograph. A few surrendered Maoists, who were part of his protection team, helped us identify the body and also zero in on the location where he could be found,” Mr. Sundarraj said. Penetrating the Maoist network was a challenging task as the leaders relied on human couriers to communicate and the use of electronic devices was negligible.

The tribals who were recruited as District Reserve Guards (DRG) and later as Bastar Fighters led security forces to cadres, leaving the outfit fractured and isolated in different pockets. The two special forces also comprise a small percentage of surrendered Maoists and the minimum education qualification was relaxed to Class 5.

“The last time the full central committee and politburo met was in 2017-18. For the past six years, there has been no such meeting,” Mr. Sundarraj said. Rao says there was no structured meeting of the top leadership since 2020.

At Jagdalpur town, Phoolmati Mandavi, 27, the oldest among her six siblings, is learning guest relations at a cafe. She joined the Maoists at 14, and laid down arms in 2025. Pandum Cafe is run in collaboration with the Bastar police. It employs surrendered Maoists and victims of LWE violence. Tupesh Chandrakar, the owner, says there are 20 employees at the cafe, out of which seven are surrendered Maoists and five from affected families.

As the government encourages surrenders, there is a disquiet among the police ranks. “These people killed our colleagues. Many of us lost arms and legs in bomb blasts. Now, we are being asked to protect these people and prepare documents for them for government schemes. Why are they being pampered so much?” a Chhattisgarh police official says. Since 2001, as many as 1,318 security force personnel have been killed in anti-Maoist operations in the State. The number across the country stands at about 2,700.

Bodi Amla was 16 when she joined the Maoists along with her older sister. “I surrendered on January 15. We did not have a place to hide any more as our leaders were also arrested. My sister and I operated in different zones. She is still with the organisation [CPI(Maoist)]. Some say she is in Telangana. I do not know her whereabouts,” said Amla, who used to be armed with an Insas rifle.

Mr. Sundarraj says a group of around 30-40 Maoists remains active in Chhattisgarh.