Bhubaneswar: BSF Additional Director General B D Sharma today said anti-Maoist operations will soon be intensified in Odisha's Malkangiri district bordering Chhattisgarh and Telangana.
Sharma said this after reviewing the Left Wing Extremism situation in Malkangiri district, considered as one of the hotbeds of the ultras.
As Odisha Maoist Party leader Sabyasachi Panda has already been arrested, BSF and other agencies engaged in anti-Maoist operations were expecting major successes in nabbing other senior leaders of the banned outfit, he said.
Accompanied by senior officers of the central para military force, Sharma today visited Malkangiri and held talks with local police officers regarding future strategies to contain the spread of Maoists in the area.
Malkangiri would gain significance for the Maoists after creation of Telangana and for its close proximity with Chhattisgarh, sources in the state police said adding, the Andhra Odisha Special Zonal Committee of the CPI(Maoist) and Maoist splinter groups were active in the region.
The meeting decided, sources said, to intensify patrolling by BSF along the district's borders with Chhattisgarh and Telangana to keep a check on infiltration of Maoists from these states to Odisha.