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Naxals? claim of swelled up ranks a farce: Surrendered cadres By Vivek Deshpande Naxalites over the past year have been adopting an intelligent redeployment strategy for deceiving the police giving them the impression that more members have joined their party?CPI (Maoists)?despite no additions in their ranks. This was revealed by some of the Naxalites, who surrendered recently. Sources told The Sunday Express that Naxalites have been moving in groups comprising 50 to 100 members, instead of the usual Dalam strength of 12 to 15 cadres. ?What they have now done is divide the Dalams in four different groups. One is local guerrilla squad (LGS) and the other are local organisational squads (LOSs). The Dalam now takes along with it the LGS, which earlier used to be stationary at the respective villages for helping out the visiting Dalams. LGSs from different villages together make a huge crowd, giving the impression that their numbers have grown manifold, when the numbers are actually the same,? they added. ?Similarly, the LOSs too move in groups.? The big gatherings on this side of the border were particularly surprising due to heavy concentration of Naxalite activity in the neighbouring Chhattisgarh in the wake of the state-sponsored Salva Judum campaign against Naxalites. ?Of course, some recruitments have happened,? sources said. The information given by the surrendered Naxalites and seized literature has also revealed a lot of other strategically important clues, which have led to highest number of encounters, about 25 in the last about one year. The police have had a good success in some of these, with bodies of nine being recovered against the estimate of over 15 Naxal deaths. What has also helped the police is substantial increase in the secret source fund used for gathering intelligence. The fund, received in lakhs, is not subject to any audit. Meanwhile, the first extension to the surrender policy expired on August 28 and the new extension hasn?t come despite assurance by the government. As it is, the first extension was due in March, but was actually announced in June. Over 83 Naxalites have surrendered between August 29 last year and till date.

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