The surrender of Tippiri Tirupati, alias Devji, along with senior Maoist leader Malla Raji Reddy and several cadres in Asifabad district of Telangana on February 22, 2026 marks a watershed moment in India’s decades-long battle against Left-Wing Extremism (LWE). Devji, aged 62, is reported to have become the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) following the death of Nambala Keshav Rao in an encounter in May 2025. His surrender — the general secretary of the most formidable underground revolutionary organization in India voluntarily laying down arms — is not merely a law enforcement success. It is a political and ideological event of the first order, signaling the effective disintegration of the Maoist movement as a cohesive political-military force in India.
This development must be understood against the backdrop of a sustained and increasingly effective multi-pronged counterinsurgency strategy pursued by the Indian state over the past decade, combining security operations, development outreach, surrender schemes, and intelligence-driven targeting of leadership.
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Table of Contents
Five Important Key Points
- Devji’s surrender is the most significant Maoist capitulation since the movement’s peak because he reportedly held the position of General Secretary — the highest organizational rank in CPI (Maoist) — following the May 2025 encounter death of Nambala Keshav Rao.
- The Union government had set March 2026 as the deadline to eliminate the armed Maoist struggle from the country, making this surrender strategically timed and politically significant.
- Devji had a history stretching back to 1982 when he was part of the Radical Students Union, a student affiliate of the then People’s War Group (PWG), demonstrating the depth of the movement’s roots in Telangana society.
- The surrender comes amid a cascade of capitulations across Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana, with many surrendered Maoists actively appealing to their former comrades to lay down arms.
- Devji was reportedly instrumental in the creation and organization of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) — the CPI (Maoist)’s armed wing — and held positions as both Central Committee member and Politburo leader.
Historical Background: The Origins and Evolution of Naxalism in India
The Naxalite movement traces its origins to the Naxalbari peasant uprising of 1967 in Darjeeling district of West Bengal, when tribal peasants led by Charu Mazumdar and Kanu Sanyal rose against landlords and seized land. The movement drew inspiration from Mao Zedong’s theory of Protracted People’s War and spread rapidly to Andhra Pradesh (then undivided), Bihar, and later Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh.
In Andhra Pradesh, the People’s War Group (PWG) emerged in the 1980s as the most formidable Naxalite organization in the country, under the leadership of figures like Kondapalli Seetharamaiah. The PWG merged with the Maoist Communist Centre in 2004 to form the CPI (Maoist), creating a unified command structure that claimed to be operating across a “Red Corridor” stretching from Nepal through Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana to the borders of Karnataka and Maharashtra.
At its peak, the CPI (Maoist) was identified by the Prime Minister’s Office as the single greatest internal security threat to India. The group carried out attacks on CRPF convoys, killed elected representatives, targeted mining and infrastructure projects, and maintained a parallel administration in forest areas through what they called “Janathana Sarkars” (people’s governments). The Dantewada ambush of April 2010, in which 76 CRPF personnel were killed, remains the deadliest single attack on security forces in independent India’s history.
Why Is the Movement Collapsing? A Multi-Factor Analysis
The surrender of Devji and the broader retreat of the Maoist movement in 2025-26 is the product of converging factors that have systematically eroded the organizational, ideological, and logistical foundations of the insurgency.
The first and most important factor is sustained security pressure. The National Greyhounds force of Andhra Pradesh, the District Reserve Guards of Chhattisgarh, the CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) battalions of the CRPF, and state police forces across affected states have developed sophisticated intelligence networks, undertaken forest-based anti-insurgency operations, and systematically targeted the Maoist leadership. Since 2015, barely a year has passed without the neutralization of a Central Committee member or senior Politburo leader.
The second factor is the steady erosion of the movement’s cadre base. Decades of recruitment from tribal and peasant communities have dried up as development infrastructure — roads, schools, health centres, mobile connectivity, banking — has penetrated previously isolated forest areas under schemes like PMGSY (Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana), PM-KISAN, the Forest Rights Act implementation, and aspirational district programs. When the material conditions that fed Maoist recruitment — land alienation, forest rights denial, police brutality, and lack of basic services — are addressed even partially, the movement loses its social base.
The third factor is the success of surrender and rehabilitation schemes. States like Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha offer substantial cash incentives, skill training, housing, and legal protection to surrendered Maoists. Many who have surrendered become active in persuading their former comrades to follow. The social network dynamics of a surrender cascade — where each high-profile capitulation reduces the costs and stigma of surrendering for others — are now clearly in operation.
The fourth factor is ideological exhaustion. The CPI (Maoist)’s Protracted People’s War strategy requires the generation of new cadre, the maintenance of mass organizations, and the gradual expansion of liberated zones. None of these are happening. The mass organizations have withered, liberated zones have shrunk dramatically, and the movement is fighting a rearguard action. The ideological appeal of a Maoist victory — already attenuated by the global collapse of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist regimes and movements — is now negligible even among the constituency of dispossessed tribals and Dalits the movement claimed to represent.
The Governance Dimension: What Naxalism Tells Us About the Indian State
It would be intellectually incomplete to analyze the collapse of Naxalism purely as a security success without acknowledging what the movement’s existence for over five decades tells us about governance failures in India. The Maoist movement flourished precisely in those regions where the Indian state had the weakest presence and the worst record of delivering on constitutional promises to its most marginalized citizens.
The Fifth Schedule areas of the Constitution — which encompass much of the tribal heartland that constituted the Red Corridor — mandate special protections for tribal land, forest rights, and self-governance through Pesa (Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act. Implementation of PESA has been consistently poor, with state governments frequently overriding its provisions to facilitate mining leases, industrial projects, and dam construction that displaces tribal communities without adequate rehabilitation.
The Forest Rights Act of 2006 was intended to recognize the rights of tribal forest dwellers over land they had cultivated for generations. Its implementation has been deeply uneven, with states like Odisha and Chhattisgarh having large pendencies of rejected or unprocessed claims. The displacement of tribals from forests, mining regions, and reservoir submergence zones — often without adequate compensation or alternative livelihoods — generated the grievance base on which Maoism fed.
The lesson for Indian governance is that security operations, however effective, must be accompanied by sustained political and social delivery. The March 2026 deadline set by the Union government for eliminating the armed Maoist struggle reflects confidence in the security track. But the governance track — strengthening tribal institutions, ensuring forest rights, creating alternative economic opportunities for former cadre and their communities — will determine whether the conditions for insurgency are permanently dissolved or merely suppressed.
What Happens After the Maoists? Challenges of Post-Conflict Rehabilitation
The surrender of top leadership creates new challenges. Large numbers of former cadres, many of whom have spent years in the forest, face significant challenges of social reintegration. Their skill sets are largely agricultural or military, their formal education is often limited, and they face social stigma in their home communities as well as potential security risks from former enemies. The rehabilitation programs need to be comprehensive, sustained, and sensitive to the specific vulnerabilities of former insurgents.
Additionally, the power vacuum created by the Maoist retreat in tribal forest areas could be filled by other destabilizing forces — criminal networks involved in timber smuggling, illegal mining, or land grabbing; or by extremist formations of various political colors. Ensuring that tribal communities in post-Maoist areas receive the full benefit of constitutional protections and development programs, and that local self-governance through gram sabhas and PESA institutions is genuinely empowered, is the most important long-term challenge.
Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations
The topic is directly relevant to UPSC Mains GS Paper II on internal security, insurgency, and left-wing extremism. Questions frequently ask about the causes, nature, and counter-strategies related to Naxalism. GS Paper III has questions on the developmental dimension of internal security. For UPSC Prelims, questions on PESA, Forest Rights Act, CoBRA battalions, and the Five Schedule are standard. The 2024 and 2025 Mains examinations had questions on the “declining influence of Naxalism” — a trend that Devji’s surrender dramatically accelerates. SSC aspirants need basic awareness of what Naxalism is, which states it affects, and the key security institutions involved in counter-insurgency.