The Communist Party of India (Maoist), or CPI (Maoist), is a banned Marxist–Leninist–Maoist communist political party and militant organization in India, designated as a terrorist organization. It is an institution that aims to overthrow the Republic of India through a protracted people's war. The party was founded on September 21, 2004, through the merger of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) People's War (People's War Group) and the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI). This merger provided a unified identity to the insurgency, which traces its roots to the Naxalbari uprising in West Bengal in 1967.
The core mechanism of the CPI (Maoist) is the pursuit of a "Protracted People's War," a strategy developed by Mao Zedong, which involves armed insurgency and mass mobilization to capture state power. The party's military wing, the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA), is trained for armed struggle and operates primarily in the forest belt of central India, often referred to as the "Red Corridor". Their objective is to destroy the state machinery and establish an "Indian People's Democratic Federative Republic".
The organization is officially banned in India under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, having been designated a terrorist organization on June 22, 2009. This designation connects the CPI (Maoist) to the broader concept of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) and the government's counter-insurgency operations, such as "Operation Green Hunt," which began around 2009. The party's structure includes a Central Committee (CC), Politbureau (PB), and a Central Military Commission (CMC). In a recent change, the party absorbed the CPI (M-L) Naxalbari in May 2014. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred to the Maoists as "the single biggest internal security challenge" for India in 2006.