Neeraj Rohmetra
JAMMU, May 27: Though the State Government has been putting the onus for review of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) on the Central Government, the Union Home Ministry hasn’t received any proposal from the State Government in this regard so far.
An official of the rank of Deputy Secretary associated with Home Ministry confirmed that no written communication had been submitted by the State Government for revocation of the controversial Act.
When asked about the process for revocation of the AFSPA from the border State, the sources said, “once the Jammu and Kashmir Government submits a proposal, the same would be examined as per the Allocation of Business Rules, 1961. But, till date no such proposal had been received by the Union Ministry”.
Sources stated that the State Government had processed the entire matter relating to notification/ implementation of AFSPA Act. “As per the records available with Home Ministry, no such communication has been issued by the Union Ministry in relation to implementation of the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Power Act, 1990”.
Further, the Government of India has also directed the State Government to review the notification of the areas as ‘disturbed areas’ under the Armed Forces (J&K) Special Powers Act, 1990. These directions were issued after the feedback obtained from All Party Delegation comprising various political leaders, which visited the State in September 2010 and had series of interactions with all sections of people.
The 39-member delegation comprised senior Parliamentary party leaders such as BJP’s Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Basudeb Acharia of the CPI(M), Gurudas Dasgupta of the CPI, JD(U) president Sharad Yadav, T R Baalu (DMK), Ramvilas Paswan (LJP), Dinesh Trivedi (Trinamool), E Ahamed (Indian Union Muslim League) and Govind Rao Adik (NCP).
Official sources also corroborated that if the State Government reviews the Disturbed Areas Act, the AFSPA will automatically cease to exist. “If the Act is reviewed, then automatically if the Disturbed Areas Act does not apply to areas in Kashmir, the AFSPA is not applied to that area of Jammu and Kashmir. If they (State Government) decide to lift DAA from say five places, then AFSPA would not apply to those five places”.
The State Government had also last year constituted a Committee to review Disturbed Areas Act (DAA), which had held some meetings. The Committee comprised Director General of Police, Home Secretary and Corps Commander of 15 Corps (for Kashmir) and Corps Commander of 16-Corps (for Jammu). While two meetings of the Committee were held last year, another meting took place early this year.
AFSPA was imposed in areas of Kashmir and Jammu after the eruption of militancy in 1990 and 2001 respectively. The then Additional Chief Secretary (Home) issued a notification vide SRO-SW4 dated July 6,1990 declaring the Kashmir Valley and parts of Rajouri, Poonch district as disturbed.
As a sequel to this, another order to notify Jammu region as disturbed was issued by the then Principal Secretary Home vide order number 219/97-ISA dated August 10,2001. The notification had declared districts of Jammu, Udhampur, Poonch, Rajouri and Doda as disturbed areas to facilitate the imposition of AFSPA there.
The State Government has been strongly advocating the process of revoking AFSPA by lifting it from peaceful areas, where there are little or no traces of militancy-related violence. They had been demanding that AFSPA, which gives armed forces in the state special powers, be lifted from districts of Jammu, Samba, Kathua in Jammu region and Srinagar and Badgam in Kashmir Valley.
Union Home Minister, P Chidambaram in his visit to the State on April 10 this year while ruling out the revocation of the ‘contentious’ Act had stated that his Ministry was considering three amendments to be incorporated in the Act, which were under consideration of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Security (CCS).
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