C’garh: BRO returns to Bastar after 2 decades to lay roads in Naxal-stronghold

The BRO has been assigned the task of building two roads in south Bastar, considered strategically significant to ‘neutralize’ the dreaded battalion number one of Maoists, a senior police officer in Bastar told this newspaper, unwilling to be quoted.

The battalion number one was once headed by hardcore Maoist Hidma who has now grown into the rank of Central Committee (CC) member of the outlawed CPI (Maoist).

Hidma who topped the target of the counterinsurgency forces has proved to be elusive for the security forces for the past one decade.

The two strategic roads to be constructed by the BRO are the 11 km-stretch Puwarti to Silger in Sukma district and the 18 km-stretch Tarrem to Kondapalli in Bijapur district.

Puwarti, a tiny forested village, is the native place of Hidma.

The village has produced over two dozen hardcore Maoists, mostly recruited by Hidma as his security guards, intelligence sources said.

A security camp has been set up in Puwarti recently to sanitize the village and surrounding areas.

Puwarti- Silger road passes through around a dozen villages which produced around 200 hardcore Maoists, the police officer said.

Twenty-three jawans were killed in a Maoist ambush in Tekuluguda, around two km from Puwarti, in April 2021.

The two roads are passing through the areas which are declared as their liberated zone by the Maoists.

“The civil contractors were scared to work in the two areas for fear of Maoist backlash. Multiple tenders elicited no response from the contractors. Union home minister Amit Shah stepped in to assign the task of building the two roads to the BRO”, official sources said.

The BRO has already started work on the Tarrem-Kondapalli Road; sources added.

The BRO which is known for building roads in treacherous regions in Ladakh and North-East first stepped into Bastar in 2004-06 to build the 100 km Jagdalpur- Geedam road passing through the districts of Bastar, Kondagaon and Dantewada.