"I welcome you all to this meeting of political parties to review the security situation arising out of Naxalite violence, particularly in the wake of the brutal attack on Congress leadership and workers and their security personnel in Chhattisgarh on 25th May.

The ideology of the Naxalites is well known-adoption of violent means with a total disregard for human life to weaken and overthrow the democratically elected governments in our country. For many years now, they have been resorting to brutal and inhuman attacks causing serious loss of lives and injury to security personnel, political functionaries and innocent people. But I believe that the Chhattisgarh attack marks the first time that they have targeted the top leadership of a political party in a systematic manner. The strength and robustness of the democratic forces in our country would suffer if the space for political activity gets restricted because of fear or terror. Therefore, it would not be wrong to say that the Chhattisgarh attack is a frontal assault on the democratic foundations of our nation.

I am sure that all of us would agree that the State governments, and especially the Chhattisgarh government, must work to ensure that conditions become more conducive to political activity in Naxalite affected areas. The Central government is committed to supporting the States fully in this task.

The Government has been following a two-pronged strategy to deal with this challenge of Left Wing Extremism- sustained and proactive operations against Maoist extremists and addressing development and governance issues in Left Wing Extremist affected areas. We believe that there is a need to further fine tune and strengthen this strategy. We have already started work in this direction. I would not like to take your time to give details of the steps that we are taking or planning to take, but would only reaffirm that our government will not be found wanting in this regard.

We believe that there is urgency to the need to effectively deal with the Naxalite menace. Even as we take all measures that are needed to permanently root out this menace, we must immediately ensure that Naxalite violence is held in check and attacks like the one in Chhattisgarh do not recur.

Our Government looks forward to benefitting from your immense wisdom, knowledge and experience to meet a grave challenge that our country faces today."