Afspa lifted from Meghalaya, many parts of Arunachal

New Delhi: The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) has been removed completely from Meghalaya and its area of operation in Arunachal Pradesh has been restricted to eight police stations bordering Assam and three districts along the Myanmar border.

According to sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Afspa, which empowers security forces to conduct operations, arrest anyone anywhere without prior notice, was removed from all areas of Meghalaya from March 31. “The decision has been taken due to a significant improvement in the security situation in the state,” they added.

In Arunachal Pradesh, areas under the controversial act have been reduced from 16 police stations areas bordering Assam to eight police stations besides Tirap, Changlang and Longding districts, sources said. Till September 2017, almost 40 per cent of Meghalaya was under Afspa. There have been demands from various organisations in the Northeast as well as in Jammu & Kashmir to repeal the Act, which, they say, gives “sweeping powers” to the security forces to act against “civilians”. The Afspa has been in force in Nagaland for several decades and in Assam from the early 1990s. It was not withdrawn in Nagaland even after a framework agreement was signed on August 3, 2015 by Naga insurgent group NSCN-IM general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah and government interlocutor R.N. Ravi in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A senior official in the MHA said there has been a substantial improvement in security situation in the Northeastern states over the last four years. The year 2017 recorded the lowest insurgency incidents and casualties among civilians and security forces in the last two decades since 1997. While insurgency has been wiped out from Tripura and Mizoram, there has been a marked improvement in security situation in Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Manipur, the official said. In Assam, sustained counter-insurgency operations against NDFB(S) have resulted in killing of 63 cadres and the arrest of 1,052 cadres/linkmen besides recovery of huge arms and ammunition between December 2014 and March this year. Across the Northeast, there has been a huge reduction of 96 per cent in casualties among the security forces from 289 in 1997 to 12 in 2017. Civilian casualties have also dropped by 96 per cent from 907 in the year 2000 to 37 last year, the official added. Insurgency incidents during the same period reduced by 85 per cent from 1963 to 308. So far as kidnapping and abductions are concerned, there has been a 40 per cent drop from 168 incidents in 2016 to 102 last year.