Won’t hesitate to cross border’
NEW DELHI, Apr 23: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh today said all three Defence services wanted the removal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from Jammu and Kashmir soon.
The Defence Minister was speaking during the felicitation of 1971 war veterans at Guwahati in Assam. This is not the first time when Rajnath Singh has spoken on the removal of the AFSPA in the Kashmir valley. During his visit to J&K as the Home Minister way back in 2015, Singh had said that the Armed Forces Act can be removed when the situation is conducive.
The AFSPA was imposed in July 1990 in the Kashmir Valley and in August 2000 in the Jammu region to curb insurgency.
“AFSPA was removed from 15 police stations in Manipur and Nagaland. That in itself means a lot. This is the result of durable peace and stability in this area,” the Minister added.
“It’s no small thing that for the last 3-4 years, the work of removing AFSPA is being done in the northeastern states. Recently AFSPA was completely removed from 23 districts of Assam,” the Minister recalled the recent developments on the AFSPA in the north eastern states.
On March 31, Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced that the Centre had decided to reduce the disturbed areas under the ambit of AFSPA in Nagaland, Manipur and Assam after decades.
After the move, the mainstream political parties in the Kashmir Valley had raised a fresh pitch for revoking the AFSPA from J&K.
Rajnath asserted that India would not hesitate to act against terrorists who target the country from across the border.
Singh said the Government was working to wipe out terrorism from the country.
“India has been successful in giving out the message that terrorism will be strongly dealt with. We will not hesitate to cross borders if the country is targeted from outside,” he maintained.
Singh also said that the eastern boundary of the country is currently experiencing more peace and stability compared to the western frontier, with Bangladesh being a friendly neighbour.
“The tension that India experiences on western frontier does not exist along eastern boundary as Bangladesh is a friendly country,” he noted.
“The problem of infiltration has almost ended. There is peace and stability at the border (in the eastern frontier) now,” the Minister said.(Agencies)
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