AFSPA for Assam wrong

It is not a favourable reflection on the Government of India that the BJP government in Assam has extended the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in the state by six months after the Centre had declined to give clearance. As a result of the Thursday decision, the entire state has become a “disturbed area”.

It is shocking to see Assam thus being placed on the same footing as J&K, and some of the smaller states of the northeast wracked by insurgent activity for decades.

Assam has known intense Ulfa activity in the past. Those bygone days are hard to imagine in today’s Assam although some Ulfa activity is not unknown from time to time. But to place this state in the same bracket as the areas hit by interminable political violence known to be aided by foreign elements in various ways is to mock the people of Assam and the spirit of the state administration and security apparatus.

Evidently, the Centre would have given due consideration to the state’s request to prolong AFSPA, and weighed all factors, before rejecting it. Assam offers a fit case for making changes to the AFSPA so that a state is disempowered from effecting AFSPA without the go-ahead of the Union government.

It also cannot do much good to the spirit of our armed forces to be given the extraordinary powers over life and death that AFSPA confers in designated “disturbed areas” in a state where life goes on reasonably normally. We will do well to remember that AFSPA has not been imposed in states hit by naxal violence.