It was in 1980, with the formation of the People’s War Group (PWG) under the leadership of Kondapalli Seetharamaiah (an erstwhile Central Organising Committee Member of the CPI-ML) in the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh, and the reorganization of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) in Bihar in the mid-1980s, that the movement resurfaced in some strength.
Initial successes were, again, rapid, and by the mid-1980s, 31 districts in seven States were afflicted by Naxalite violence. By the early 1990s, however, the problem had been eliminated from at least 16 of these districts, bringing the total number of affected districts to just 15 in four States. The reconstruction, thereafter, was initially more continuous and systematic, with wider areas being gradually targeted and consolidated. In recent years, however, the growth of the movement has been exponential. Thus, at the meeting of the Central Coordination Committee of Naxalite-affected States at Bhubaneshwar on November 21, 2003, the then Union Home Secretary had disclosed that a total of 55 districts in nine States were affected by varying degrees of Naxalite violence. Just ten months later, on September 21, 2004, an official note circulated at the meeting of Chief Ministers of Naxalite-affected States indicated that this number had gone up to as many as 156 districts in 13 States (of a total of 602 districts in the country). By August 2007, this number had risen to 194 districts (out of an augmented 625) in 18 States. Not all these Districts and States are, of course, seething with Maoist violence. Just 62 of these were categorised as ‘highly affected’, reflecting significant levels of violence; another 53 districts were categorised as ‘moderately affected’, indicating high levels of political mobilisation and some violence; while 79 districts fell into the ‘marginally affected’ category, in which preliminary political mobilisation had been noticed. Sources indicate that intelligence estimates now put at least 220 Districts in 22 States into the sphere of varying degrees of Maoist influence and activity.