The point about this kind of political argument is that it only works when nobody counts the numbers. Kiren Rijiju's accusation on Tuesday that the Congress "is becoming a Maoist party" is a completely different ball game, as there's a data trail that the Congress has been trying to explain away over the last three days.

The row started on August 15 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking to the nation from the Red Fort, made a statement that was not meant to be a contentious one. It is the intellectual infrastructure for separatism after the guns fell silent that has been secured by the men who used to carry rifles into the forests of Bastar and Gadchiroli: the "dimagi naxals" or ideological Naxals, he said, who are found in seminar rooms, television studios and social media timelines. He urged their identification and isolation, as the country moves towards the 2047 development target. Congress MP P Chidambaram, who was not one to take a hit, responded on X that "he was a dimagi naxal," an expression that is commonly used as an insult. Jairam Ramesh went on to say that the term is simply a repetition of the old "urban naxal" term, a phrase Amit Shah himself had accepted in Parliament a few days ago that has no legal definition.

Rijiju's comments on Tuesday weren't so much a denial as an extension. In a statement to reporters, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister said the Prime Minister's note was never targeted at any particular opposition party, but the Congress had decided to look into the mirror on its own initiative. He went on to say that the National Advisory Council under Sonia Gandhi in the UPA days had been "dominated by individuals who had such ideas," and the party's current attitude towards Article 370, Northeast and security services was "legitimizing" such attitudes. His strongest comment was on the families of those killed in anti-Naxal operations in the Army, CRPF, SSB, BSF, ITBP, CISF and NSG, which "these Maoists and intellectual Naxals" do not show any sympathy towards when they are killed in the line of duty, he said.

Remove the adjectives and one is left with the actual (and by now mostly agreed) statistical narrative. The number of incidents of Left Wing Extremism had dropped from 2,213 in 2010 to 33 by the end of July this year which represents a reduction of almost 99 per cent, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) figures before Parliament revealed. The civilian and security forces death tolls have dropped from 1,005 to 11 during the same period. The 126 districts officially identified as LWE-affected in 2013-14 have been reduced to single digits in successive reviews by the government's home ministry and currently the government states that there is no single district which continues to be classified under the affected-district scheme. Even in the three districts of Chhattisgarh Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur where the insurgency's last stand is still fresh, the trend is one of retreat and not resurgence.

The Red Corridor was not only a security issue; it was a roadblock on the investment side as well. Between the two, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand and Odisha have significant coal, iron ore and bauxite reserves and mining and infrastructure projects were often delayed or terminated in the 2000s due to the inability of contractors to ensure the safety of workers and protection of equipment in the territory at the heart of the conflict. With security calmed, these districts have seen a steep rise in road density in the wake of initiatives to improve connectivity, mobile and banking penetration in previously inaccessible areas, and state governments are able to auction off mining blocks that a decade ago would have seen no bidders. The surrender and rehabilitation packages have also been quietly converted into a few thousand former fighters from the graveyard to the formal economy and they are paid lakhs of rupees per cadre depending on their rank, which is a dividend in itself.

None of this is to say the government's language isn't subject to scrutiny and it would be unethical to argue otherwise. Ramesh's basic apprehension that urban naxal and now dimagi naxal are political terms and have no definition in law is not frivolous. Even though one may look a bit too obviously at the problem, this loose language, used by an incumbent government against people writing columns or making protest, is fraught with the danger of stifling legitimate dissent, and India's own courts have repeatedly rebuked over-prolonged use of language akin to sedition for this very reason. A viable opposition has a moral right to argue even an “unpopular” position on Article 370 and federal autonomy and should not be branded an “insurgency” simply because they do so.

However, this is a two-way street, and Rijiju's central point remains unaffected. What is one thing that voters can expect of the Congress is to be ready to say at any moment that it supports extremism, and that it has decided that it does not. They are entitled to draw their own inferences from that. Chidambaram's one-line reply could have been the "mic drop". Three days later, it's just an admission, unwelcome but easily accepted by the BJP.