Which States in the N.E. are under AFSPA?

CategoryPolity

Last Updated15/12/2021

The killing of 14 civilians in a botched military operation in Nagaland has led to fresh calls for repealing The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a stringent law that allows the armed forces to use maximum force in an area declared as ‘disturbed’.
Following the incident, the demand for repealing the law has become quite vociferous. Among those calling for its withdrawal are the Chief Ministers of Nagaland and Meghalaya.

The AFSPA like many other controversial laws is of a colonial origin. The AFSPA was first enacted as an ordinance in the backdrop of Quit India Movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi in 1942.
A day after its launch on August 8, 1942, the movement became leaderless and turned violent at many places across the country. Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, VB Patel and a host of others had been put behind the bars.
Shaken by the massive scale of violence across the country, the then Viceroy Linlithgow promulgated the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance, 1942.
This Ordinance practically gave the Armed Forces a “license to kill” when faced with internal disturbances.
On the lines of this ordinance, the Indian government promulgated four ordinances in 1947 to deal with internal security issues and unrest arising due to partition in four provinces Bengal, Assam, East Bengal and the United Provinces.

The AFSPA has been in force for decades in most parts of the Northeast States. Under this law, an area can be declared a ‘disturbed area’, bringing into play the protection it offers to the armed forces for use of force in the notified area.
The notification is extended periodically, mostly for six months at a time.
As of today, the whole of Assam and Nagaland are ‘disturbed areas’. The last six-month extension was made on August 28 and June 30 respectively.
The whole of Manipur, with the exception of the Imphal municipal area, has been notified by the State government for one year from December 2020.
In Arunachal Pradesh, the ‘disturbed area’ notification is confined to the districts of Tirap, Changlang and Longding, and the areas falling under Namsai and Mahadevpur police stations, bordering Assam.
The AFSPA was revoked in Tripura in May 2015, after being in force since February 1997. It was revoked by a decision of the State Cabinet following substantial improvement in the ground situation.
Meghalaya was under AFSPA for 27 years, until it was revoked from April 1, 2018. The Act was implemented in a 20-km area along the border with Assam.
Jammu and Kashmir has a separate J&K Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1990.

In 2005, a Government-appointed five-member committee headed by retired Supreme Court judge, P. Jeevan Reddy, recommended that AFSPA be repealed.
It suggested that the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act could be suitably amended to deal with terrorism.
It made this recommendation as it felt that the AFSPA created an impression that the people of the Northeast States were being targeted for hostile treatment.
The Supreme Court was prompted to set up the Santosh Hegde committee following the petition filed by the Extra Judicial Execution Victim Families Association of Manipur asking it to look into six charges of unlawful encounter killings in Manipur.
The Santosh Hegde committee submitted its report in 2013, saying five of the six encounters were “not genuine”, that “disproportionate force” had been used against persons with “no known criminal antecedents”, and that AFSPA gave “sweeping powers” to men in uniform without granting citizens protection against its misuse.
Further, the committee was of the view that if greater power was given then greater would be the restraint and stricter would be the mechanism to prevent its misuse or abuse, but this possibility was absent in the case of Manipur.
However, the Army has been resolutely opposed to the repeal of AFSPA.