Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Friday that the three hotspots that had become a "festering wound" for India -- Naxalism, the northeast and Jammu and Kashmir -- have been given "permanent solutions" by the Narendra Modi government and these regions will soon become like the rest of the country.
In his inaugural address at the three-day DGP/IGP annual conference here, Shah said a 360-degree attack has to be launched against narcotics and organised crime, and such a system has to be built that drug traffickers and criminals do not get "even an inch of space" in the country.
He said the time has come for state police forces to work together with the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), strike hard at narcotics gangs operating at the state, national and international levels, and put their masterminds behind bars.
The home minister said after the Union government banned the Popular Front of India (PFI), nationwide raids were conducted on the organisation's hideouts and arrests made, setting an outstanding example of Centre-state coordination.
He said the Centre has strengthened the security grid in the last seven years by constructing 586 fortified police stations.
As a result, the number of Naxal-affected districts in the country has come down from 126 in 2014 to just 11 today, he added.
Shah expressed confidence that the country will be completely free from the menace of Naxalism before the next conference of directors general of police (DGPs) and inspectors general of police (IGPs).
Besides Shah, the 60th edition of the closed-door, off-camera huddle of police chiefs from across the country at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Chhattisgarh's Raipur will also see the participation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval and the heads of central police organisations, including Intelligence Bureau chief Tapan Kumar Deka.
The important meeting comes within weeks of agencies busting a "white-collar" terror module that was behind a car blast near Delhi's Red Fort that claimed 15 lives on November 10.
The conference, which will conclude on November 30 with Modi's address, aims to review the progress made in addressing key policing challenges so far and outline a forward-looking roadmap for building a "Surakshit Bharat", in alignment with the national vision of "Viksit Bharat", according to an official statement.
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