A decades-long shadow over central India's heartland — the Maoist insurgency that claimed thousands of lives across the so-called Red Corridor — is being declared over. On Sunday, 8 November 2026, Union Labour and Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya posted on X to mark what the government is calling a historic milestone: a Diwali celebrated as 'Naxal Mukt Bharat' — a Naxal-free India.

Mandaviya's post, written in Hindi, reads: 'Under the leadership of respected Prime Minister ji, today the entire country is celebrating a glorious Diwali of a Naxal-free India.' The framing is deliberate — Diwali, the festival of lights, cast here as the symbolic end of a long darkness across India's most conflict-scarred districts.

From Red Corridor to this moment

The Left Wing Extremism (LWE) insurgency, rooted in the mid-20th century and peaking in the 2000s, once gripped swathes of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra and neighbouring states. At its worst, it threatened infrastructure projects, disrupted governance, and kept entire tribal communities trapped between the state and armed cadres. The government labelled the affected belt the 'Red Corridor.'

Successive governments ran coordinated counter-insurgency efforts combining Central Armed Police Forces deployments with development schemes — roads, schools, banking access — in the worst-affected districts. Official data over the last decade showed a steady, documented decline in Naxal-related incidents and fatalities. Individual districts were periodically declared LWE-free as security and governance benchmarks were met.

Modi government's security-plus-development doctrine

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in power since 2014, the approach sharpened into a twin-track doctrine: intensified operations by central forces alongside accelerated welfare and infrastructure delivery in formerly affected areas. The BJP-led government consistently framed LWE elimination as both a security imperative and a development promise to India's tribal heartland — that no citizen should live outside the reach of the Indian state.

Mandaviya's post on Diwali day signals that the government now considers that promise fulfilled at the national level — a declaration that carries enormous political and symbolic weight even as the operational details of remaining affected pockets will face scrutiny in Parliament and on the ground.

What the 'Naxal-free' declaration means for central India

For the residents of districts that lived under LWE violence — farmers, Adivasi communities, local officials, teachers who risked their lives to show up — this Diwali carries a meaning beyond the festival calendar. Central Armed Police Forces personnel who sustained the decade-long campaign are the other stakeholders in this moment.

The government will now face questions on what comes next: sustained development funding for formerly affected areas, rehabilitation of surrendered cadres, and whether the security architecture deployed over decades can be responsibly wound down. Parliamentary sessions ahead will be the arena where those numbers and commitments get tested.

India lit its diyas this Diwali — and for the first time in decades, the government says every corner of the map is in that light.