New Delhi:
More than 100 Naxals attacked a train in Bihar on Thursday and killed three people including a soldier of the Railway Protection Force (RPF).
The Bihar attack comes weeks after 25 people, including top leaders of the Congress, were killed in Chhattisgarh when Naxals attacked a convoy headed to a political rally.
That massacre pushed the issue of how to deal with Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) at the top of the agenda at a meeting on internal security called last week by the Prime Minister and attended by the heads of different state governments.
The Centre and states were unable to find common ground.
The CPI(Maoist) is on the list of banned organisations. But political parties refused to equate Naxals with terrorists at an all-party meeting on May 10, which was called by the PM, and attended by chief ministers of different states.
The Left stressed that Naxals are able to galvanise support in the most backward parts of states like Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand because the state has failed to provide health, education, governance and security.
Despite a rare show of support from the BJP on government policy, the Centre was unable to push for a strongly-worded resolution.
The Centre wants Maoist-affected states - like Odisha, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh - to forgo the focus on development of Naxal-affected areas and concentrate on police action.
This approach signals, sources say, a paradigm shift in the Centre's assessment of the Naxal insurgency.
Specifically, it would like states to conduct thorough intelligence operations to identify and locate top local Naxal commanders, add more police stations in the worst-affected areas, empower and upgrade special state forces so that they are less dependent on central paramilitary troops, and speed up the construction of roads so that troops have better access to affected areas.
The Centre also believes it is essential for mainstream political parties to be encouraged to be more active in areas dominated and controlled by Maoists.
"We want political parties and states to realise that the soft option won't work and unless they go after the Maoists, the Maoists will kill them at every given opportunity, no matter how weak or denuded the Maoists may be," a senior official in the Home Ministry told NDTV.
But at the meet on internal security, there was resistance to "the military approach."
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said, "We must work together to launch serious developmental initiatives so that misdirected people or those who were left of the development net can be brought back into the socio-economic net."
In his state, the ground support for the Naxals appears to be shrinking, which means there is little incentive for the government there to change its strategy.
Despite the differences at last week's meeting, the Centre wants to promote what officials refer to as "the Andhra model."
Over the last decade, the state of Andhra Pradesh has evolved a policy where the District Superintendent of Police (DSP) makes key decisions about how and when to target Naxals. In most cases, this officer is expected to lead operations against Maoist military formations - platoons and companies of the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army of the CPI (Maoist).
The State Intelligence Bureau helps to gather information about Naxal activities and leaders, which is passed on to the DSP.
Development of Naxal-affected areas by providing facilities like road, health, education and revitalising the Public Distribution System to counter the propaganda of Naxals takes second place to military action.