Mahendra Karma[1] is a politician from Chhattisgarh, India. He was the leader of the opposition in the Chhattisgarh Vidhan Sabha from 2003 to 2008 and belongs to the Congress party. In 2005, he organised the Salwa Judum movement against Naxalites (Maoists) in Chattisgarh. The initiative was praised by the Chief Minister Raman Singh, but has been criticized as a "Vigilante militia" (sic) by pro-Naxalite groups. He was a minister in the Ajit Jogi cabinet.
Karma, an ethnic adivasi, formed the Salwa Judum, a supposedly anti-Naxalite movement led by local elites. Despite being an opposition party member, Karma aggressively lobbied in order to get bipartisan support for the Salwa Judum, and largely succeeded in 2005, when Salwa Judum was adopted by the state government and recruited as a corp of "Special Police Officers". They were given broad latitude in their actions.[1] After the Supreme Court expressed disapproval of the Salwa Judum movement in 2008 and asked the state of Chhattisgarh to implement remedial measures mentioned in the National Human Rights Commission report which had detailed widespread human rights abuses committed by the Salwa Judum, the movement slowly started to disappear from the Chhattisgarh state.[2]