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AFSPA & its legitimacy | Science and Rationalists' Association of India

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, AFSPA

Featured Articles

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Lt Col held with 24cr drugs

The countrys Constitution does not intend defense forces to be responsible

for maintaining internal security; that charge belongs to state administrations.

Bangladeshi blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider

stabbed to death in Dhaka

The AFSPA was passed by Parliament to circumvent that roadblock. How the

Massive Protest in Shahbag, Dhaka,

country will be administered within the four corners of the Constitution is for

Bangladesh

politicians sitting in Parliament and state legislatures to decide. They, it

follows, have the prerogative to review from time to time provisions of such

statutes as the AFSPA, which they themselves had legislated. Given continuing
reports of peoples unhappiness with the functioning of the act, it is only natural

Kolkata Book Fair-2013

for politicians to wish to take another look at it. Some of them are possibly happy

Current issue of Aamra Yuktibadi

with the act as it is and would like to leave it in an un-amended form. Some
others, for example, the current chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, will
perhaps not mind the continuation of the act, but only after the introduction of
amendments which address public concerns over the seeming absence of
accountability in the act. There might yet be other politicians who would rather
scrap the act in its entirety, since in their view it goes ill with the mores of a free
democratic society.

(Boimela Sankha) January 2013

?
Mathurapur Branch Remembering Sunil
Gangopadhyay on 2.12.12
Mallojula Koteswara Rao (26.11.56
24.11.2011): Kishenjis death completes 1

In sum, there is scope for a public debate on aspects of the AFSPA. The army
chief of staff who no doubt had the benefit of the advice of his service
colleagues looks with disfavor on such a debate. He would like the act to

year.

continue in its present form, which allows military personnel a free hand while
dealing with elements suspected of waging war against the State. He is actually

Adra Branch Remembering Sunil

in some fury, and has gone to the length of questioning the motives of politicians
who want to either do away with or drastically amend the act.

Presenred by HA and SRAI

Gangopadhyay:A Grand Evening

Current issue of Aamra Yuktibadi (Diwali

Is not the army boss forgetting his station? India is no Thailand; it is no Pakistan
either, surely not the Pakistan people and politicians over there are currently
trying to extricate themselves from. The armed forces in India are the

Sankha) November 2012

Constitution lays down, servants of an elected government. The government is

elected by politicians who are members of parliament. The status of politicians

13th year

who are elected as representatives of the people is way superior to that of the
army chief. It is, of course, within the range of the army chiefs responsibilities to
speak or send a note to the defense secretary and, through the secretary,
to the defense minister, in case he feels apprehensive about proposals to
amend or abolish the AFSPA. But that is all. To presume that he can publicly
dress down politicians who hold views different from his on the merits of the act
is a bit too much; somebody needs to advise him where to draw the line.
For the ground reality in regions of the country where military or paramilitary
forces have been or are being considered to be deployed is often
excruciatingly complex. Leave aside at-this-moment-once-more-a-boilingcauldron Kashmir, where factors such as religion and national identity further
cloud the picture. Even in the other regions afflicted by insurgency whether the
north-eastern belt or states like Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and West
Bengal stark issues of ethnicity render enforcement of law and order
bewilderingly difficult. It would be foolhardy to delegate this to the discretion of
military or paramilitary personnel.
Two recent incidents in West Bengal, where the Central Reserve Police Force is
engaged jointly with the state police in tracking down Maoists, are worth
mentioning in this context. In the first incident, the CRPF shot down in a forest
encounter eight suspected Maoists, three of them women. The bodies of those
killed were brought back from the forest to the nearest sub-divisional town as

Irom Sharmilas anti-AFSPA fast enters

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trophy: the hands and feet of each were separately bound and then hung, upside
down, with the help of a strong rope, from a bamboo pole, precisely the manner
in which a carcass is brought back when villagers return from a successful hunt
of wild boar or of any other predatory animal.

www.srai.org/afspa-its-legitimacy/

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AFSPA & its legitimacy | Science and Rationalists' Association of India

In the other episode, in a supposedly Maoist-infested village, the CRPF accosted
a schoolboy, the fingers of whose right hand were smeared with red ink. He
must have been, it was instantly concluded, writing posters extolling the Maoist
cause. Suspicion was reckoned as proof; the boy was set upon and beaten
black and blue.
In both incidents, Maoists are the target, but the victims happen to be adivasis,
and this is true in almost every part of the country where conditions of rebellion
prevail. The incidents are bound to be grist for the Maoist propaganda mill: the
system does not consider you, adivasis, as human beings, they treat you as
beasts, even your children are not spared, you therefore have every right to rise in
revolt against the system.
Awesome consequences can follow if counter-insurgency operations are not
supervised with finesse and imagination, a responsibility too risky to be left to
the whims of the CRPF or the armed forces. There is therefore enough logic in
seeking a review of the AFSPA. This matter does not fall in the domain of the
chief of staff or his colleagues.
Courtesy: The Telegraph, JULY 2010
Supreme Court on encounter killings by Police

Fake encounter killings by cops are nothing but cold-blooded brutal murder,
which should be treated as the rarest of rare offence and police personnel
responsible for it should be awarded death sentence. They should be
hanged.Justice Markandey Katju said in connection with encounter case
in killing of a gangster in Rajasthan.

[Times of India, page-1, 09.08.2011]

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1. The army chief cannot say what will be done with the AFSPA
2. Irom Sharmilas anti-AFSPA fast enters 13th year
3. Decision on AFSPA soon: Chidambaram

6 Responses to AFSPA & its legitimacy

Anabil 17 September 2011 at 10:07 pm #

Thanks for NEWS ..

suman 18 September 2011 at 8:05 am #

thanks srai for posting this.

Ranjan mondal 18 September 2011 at 4:57 pm #

Unconstitutional & Draconian law of the country.Thanks H.A.

Dwijapada Bouri 20 September 2011 at 1:29 pm #

Good posting

Madhusudan Mahato 20 September 2011 at 2:24 pm #

Thank SRAI for this news.

sujoy chanda 23 September 2011 at 7:40 pm #

thanks to srai and HA

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Current issue of Aamra Yuktibadi (Boimela Sankha)
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