An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) will soon be deployed to keep surveillance on Maoist activities in dense forests of the state, the state DGP V Dinesh Reddy on Tuesday.

He further added The UAV, along with a chopper for rescue operations, has been sanctioned by the Centre to beef up the surveillance set-up. It would start the operations from next month. The UAV costs Rs 30 Cr and will have its base station at Madurapudi in the coastal city of Rajahmundry. It will help us track down the activities of Naxals even in the thick forests and also send back images, he said.

The UAV, which can fly for eight hours at a stretch, would carry two payloads, one of which would take images and send the same to the control centre in a flash. The other payload carried by the craft will be able to detect voice signals transmitted through VHF and UHF sets and send the message to the control station. It would be used to scan four districts of Telangana, the Dhandakaranya forest region, East Godavari, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram, Srikakulam districts and also parts of Chhattisgarh and south and central Orissa on the Andhra-Orissa Border (AOB) area.

The Centre has also provided a helicopter which can carry 17 persons at a time. “Moving to interior areas by road takes time. With the help of the helicopter, the personnel can be dropped with the help of ropes and it would also come handy in rescue operations,” he said.

The Ministry of Home Affairs will be providing the funds towards the expenses for the operation and maintenance of the chopper. The helicopter can be used for two hours a day.

The police estimate that there are around 340 underground Maoist cadres in the state. Sources say, out of this, 200 are in other states, while 140 are living on the bordering areas of Andhra Pradesh.