Bhubaneswar: After determining that five districts in Odisha have been free from Maoist activities, the state government Friday approved to remove those five districts from the Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme.
The five districts are Angul, Boudh, Sambalpur, Deogarh and Nayagarh.
Sources said that Odisha has been experiencing the scourge of Left Wing Extremism for more than three decades.
For this in 2012, the state government had declared 19 districts as SRE districts.
The SRE scheme is a non-plan scheme whose main objective is to supplement capacity building programmes in Maoist affected districts to deal with the naxalite problem effectively.
Under the scheme, the state government has implemented robust security response as well as focused development activities in the 19 districts.
However, in April, 2018 six districts including Jajpur, Dhenkanal, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Gajapati and Ganjam were declared as free from Maoist activities. For which the state government had removed the Central government sponsored Security Related Expenditure (SRE) Scheme tag from the six districts.
In the last two years, a total of eleven districts have so far been assessed to be free of Maoists due to effective security response and good governance by the state government.
“Odisha Government has approved reoval of five districts Angul, Boudh, Sambalpur, Deogarh and Nayagarh from LWE affected SRE districts. This recgnises improved security situation in these districts. Odisha Police is committed to make whole of Odisha LWE free,” tweeted DGP Abhay.
PNN
