Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram will arrive on a two-day visit to West Bengal Saturday to review the anti-Maoist operation in Lalgarh and will also tour the political flashpoint of Mangalkote in Burdwan.
The visit comes in the wake of reports, though unconfirmed, that Maoist leader Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji is either injured or dead in a clash with the security forces.
Chidambaram will tour Lalgarh and other areas with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
The home minister will arrive at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport Saturday afternoon and immediately leave for Burdwan by helicopter.
Chidambaram will leave for Lalgarh Sunday morning. He is slated to fly out to Chennai Sunday afternoon, official sources said.
Mangalkote area has seen widespread violence since Falguni Mukherjee, a CPI-M district committee member and popular rural leader, was killed June 16 last year.
After the murder, several opposition stalwarts -- among them Leader of Opposition in the assembly Partha Chattopadhyay of Trinamool Congress and Congress legislative party chief Manas Bhuniya -- have faced the wrath of CPI-M cadres whenever they tried to go to the area.
The Trinamool Congress, the second largest partner in the ruling United Progressive Alliance, has been consistently demanding the central government's intervention in several trouble-torn spots of the state.
The Lalgarh review comes seven weeks after Chidambaram finalised the blueprint of the inter-state Operation Greenhunt at a meeting with four Maoist-affected eastern states of West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand.
The Trinamool Congress has also persistently claimed that innocent tribals are being persecuted in West Bengal in the name of fighting the Maoists.