Are Maoists making a desperate try to regain lost ground in AOB region?

Are Maoists making a desperate try to regain lost ground in AOB region? Though they had retreated from the region after the exchanges of fire at Ramaguda and Teegalametta, the recent face-off in the Dumakonda forest area in ASR district shows their attempt to enter their once stronghold.

On May 7, two senior leaders of the banned CPI (Maoist), Kakuri Pandana, alias Jagan (60) and Vaga Podiami, alias Ramesh (51), were killed in an exchange of fire with the elite anti-Naxal force of Andhra Pradesh, the Greyhounds, in the Dumakonda forest area of Alluri Sitharama Raju (ASR) district bordering Chhattisgarh.

Both the leaders were once top leaders in the Andhra Odisha Border Special Zonal Committee (AOBSZC), the unit that once enjoyed considerable influence in the AOB region.

While Jagan had a reward of about ₹20 lakh on his head, Ramesh had a reward of ₹5 lakh, and both had been elusive for a long time.

The exchange of fire and the killing of top leaders indicate that the Maoists are trying to get back to the AOB region, which is their hotbed once.

Soon after the 2016 Ramaguda exchange of fire, in which 31 Maoists, including top leaders, were killed, and the Teegalametta exchange of fire in June 2021, in which six top Maoists, including Ashok and Ranadev, were killed, the Maoists slowly began to retreat to safe havens in Chhattisgarh. The retreat was almost complete with the killing of Kora Nageswara Rao and the surrender of senior tribal leaders such as Sudheer.

In the last three years, the Maoists’ strength dwindled to a few militia members, with no senior member present in the AOB region.

Once in a while they tried to create some disturbances operating from Chhattisgarh, especially in the Chintoor and Y. Ramavaram areas, as the region borders the Sukma district of Chhattisgarh.