Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated Diwali on Sunday with security personnel at a counter-insurgency base in Chhattisgarh's Bastar region, declaring that India was marking its first festival of lights since the end of the decades-long Maoist insurgency.
Modi spent the day at the CoBRA Operations Base in Karanpur, in the Bastar district, where he addressed personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force, its elite Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA), the Border Security Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Sashastra Seema Bal and the state police. He told them that the Diwali of 2026 was different from every one that had come before it, because it was the first on which every district in the country was free from Naxalism.
"This is the first Diwali after the country has achieved victory in the decades-long fight against Naxalism and Maoist terror. This is the first Diwali when every district of the country is free from Naxalism. This is the first Diwali when crores of Indians have been freed from the fear of Naxalism," he said, in remarks reported by several Indian outlets.
The prime minister said the transformation of Bastar itself told the story. The region, along with the adjoining Abujhmad forests, was for years one of the strongest bastions of the Maoist insurgency, and the Karanpur base served as a training centre and launch pad for the operations that pushed the rebels back. "This is a land where the menace of Naxalism once prevailed. However, owing to your sacrifice and dedication, the menace of Naxalism has now ended in this very region, and a new wave of development has begun," he told the personnel gathered there.
Modi also pointed to what he presented as a milestone in the security forces' own record: for the first time in 47 years, he said, not a single member of the CRPF had lost his life while on duty during the past year. He paid tribute at the camp memorial to CRPF personnel killed in the line of duty, and thanked the forces for their sacrifice, dedication and commitment to national security.
The visit continued a tradition Modi has followed for more than a decade, spending Diwali with soldiers and security personnel rather than with his family. He announced the trip earlier in the day on X, writing: "A very special Diwali with our brave security forces in Bastar, Chhattisgarh." Defence Minister Rajnath Singh marked the festival in a similar way, celebrating Diwali with Indian Army personnel at the Sherathang War Memorial near the Nathula Pass in Sikkim.
The Maoist insurgency, also known as Left-Wing Extremism, has run for more than five decades, at its peak affecting large swathes of central and eastern India, including Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Successive governments have combined security operations with development spending in an effort to end it, and the present government has set a public target of eliminating the insurgency entirely. The claim that every district is now free of Naxalism is the government's own assessment, and independent verification of the security situation in the most remote forested areas remains difficult.
Modi framed the end of the insurgency as a beginning rather than an end. He told the personnel that the elimination of Naxalism should be viewed as the starting point for further progress, and that development — roads, schools, healthcare and jobs — must now reach the areas that were once cut off by violence. He also cautioned, according to reports of his address, that while the armed insurgency had been defeated, its ideological sympathisers still posed a challenge.
The announcement drew a political edge as well. The prime minister described the end of Maoist terror as a victory of the country's policies and political will, and the visit, staged in the heart of the former insurgency, was plainly intended to underline that message on one of India's biggest festivals.
What happens next will be judged in Bastar itself. The government's test is whether the areas that were once Maoist strongholds now see the development Modi promised — and whether the calm he declared on Sunday holds in the forests of Abujhmad and beyond. For the personnel at Karanpur, however, the day was a celebration: a Diwali spent with the prime minister, in a region that was once synonymous with the insurgency, on the day he declared it over.
