Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that all forms of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) will be eliminated from the country in three years’ time and no power on Earth can “snatch” Kashmir from India.

Speaking at the 26th Raising Day Parade of Rapid Action Force (RAF) – a special unit of CRPF – on Sunday, the Home Minister said that while some time back 126 districts were affected by Naxal violence, it has today come down to about 10-12.

Praising the jawans at the event, Singh said that the day is not far that LWE will be eliminated from the country.

“May be in a time period of 1-2 or 3 years, and this would happen due to your (CRPF) determination, courage and hard work and that of the state police forces,” he said.

“I congratulate you on the kind of work you have done in the LWE theatre of the country,” Singh said.

Singh said that CRPF has killed 131 Maoists and militants this year. Another 1,278 of them have been apprehended while 58 have surrendered.

Commenting on the situation in Jammu-Kashmir, where CRPF undertakes various counter-insurgency operations, the Home Minister said that the force has ensured security commendably even though some youth in J-K have been misled into militancy.

He added that J-K has been and will be an “inseparable” part of India.

“Kashmir is ours, it was ours and it will be ours. No power of the world can snatch it from us,” he said.

“If some Kashmiri youths do things they should not because they are instigated by some people, you handle them properly as you feel that they belong to our country. But if any person indulges in any terrorist activity, no power in the world can stop you from neutralising that person,” the Home Minister told the jawans.

Talking about the specific role of the RAF, a special unit under the CRPF, during riots and protests, the home minister advised them to be prompt and rapid but never “reckless.”

All the police forces are like civilised units and they should never do anything that will label them as “brutal.”

“One should know how to behave during crowd control and similar duties and should always know how much and when to use force,” he said, adding that the RAF is a specialised force which believes in serving people with sensitive policing.

Singh’s comments can be seen in the context of a recent incident in Uttar Pradesh’s capital where a police jawan allegedly killed an unarmed MNC executive.

An RAF battalion has a strength of just over 1,000 personnel and it is equipped with gadgets and non-lethal weapons like pump action guns, tear smoke grenade launchers and others to enforce security and law and order in case of protests or riot-like situations.

The force is part of the Central Reserve Police Force, the country’s largest paramilitary force or the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) with over 3 lakh personnel.

It was raised and made fully operational in October, 1992. It has ten battalions (of about 10,000) based in various parts of the country in order to cut down response time to counter an incident of trouble.

The ten existing RAF battalions are based in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Aligarh, Coimbatore, Jamshedpur, Bhopal and Meerut.

Five of its new bases are in Jaipur, Varanasi, Mangalore, Hajipur(Bihar) and Nuh (Haryana).

(With inputs from agencies.)