The home ministry has sent a proposal to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) for raising a new agency for de-mining
operations in the Maoist-infested areas to reduce casualties of the security forces from the landmines laid by the ultras.

Home Minister P Chidambaram will discuss the proposal also with the chief ministers of seven states hit by the Maoist violence. He plans to visit these states from the next week, starting with Raipur and then Kolkata.

The proposed agency will have crack de-mining teams, drawn from the Indian Army as also from the forest security agencies like those of South Africa and Israel that have some of the best de-mining experts. It will also have better equipment than those with the central security forces that can detect mines only up to six inches while the Maoists knowing this limitation plant mines far under the ground.

Sources said de-mining has emerged as the focus of the government’s renewed efforts at fine-tuning its anti-Maoist strategy as well-hidden mines or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have become the Maoists’ most potent weapon, with which they have been blowing up security forces’ vehicles, including mine-protected ones, and inflicting heavy casualties.

The proposed agency will have the expertise and resources to detect and defuse mines across huge areas. The strategy will be finalised after receiving inputs from the state police forces, but the sources said areas in Chhattisgarh and Orissa had already been identified for the first phase of the de-mining exercise.