The Quest for Reform: Reviewing the AFSP Act

When a law meant to protect a nation ends up becoming a symbol of fear for its own citizens, something has gone deeply wrong. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 – known as AFSPA – has long occupied that uncomfortable position in India’s legal landscape. Enacted to deal with insurgency in the northeastern states, the Act grants sweeping powers to the armed forces in “disturbed areas,” including the authority to search, arrest, and even use lethal force without a court warrant. For decades, these extraordinary powers operated with minimal accountability. But by the early 2000s, the pressure from civil society, protest movements, and human rights bodies had grown too loud to ignore. The Government of India responded by doing something significant: it appointed a committee to take a hard look at the law itself.

The breaking point: protests that forced a reckoning 🔗

The catalyst for the committee’s formation was not a single event but a culmination of civil unrest – particularly in Manipur. On November 2, 2000, ten civilians, including an 18-year-old National Bravery Award winner and a 62-year-old woman, were allegedly shot and killed by the Assam Rifles while waiting at a bus stop in Malom, Imphal. Three days later, a young woman named Irom Chanu Sharmila began what would become the world’s longest hunger strike – demanding the repeal of AFSPA.

Sharmila, who came to be known as the “Iron Lady of Manipur,” was arrested within days of beginning her protest and charged under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code for attempting suicide. She was force-fed through a nasal tube for over 500 weeks in custody. Amnesty International declared her a prisoner of conscience, and the case drew international attention to India’s use of AFSPA. She finally ended her fast in August 2016 – not because AFSPA was repealed, but because she concluded that fasting alone could not change a government’s mind.

Her protest, and the broader atmosphere of unrest in the northeast, created significant political pressure. Following weeks of mass public protests in Manipur in 2004, the Government of India took a step that was remarkable in itself – it formally acknowledged that the law needed to be reviewed.

Formation of the Justice Jeevan Reddy committee 🔗

In November 2004, the Ministry of Home Affairs constituted a five-member committee under Office Order No. 11011/97/2004-NE-III dated 19th November, 2004, to review the various provisions of AFSPA. The committee was headed by Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India – a choice that signalled the seriousness of the exercise. The terms of reference included consulting state governments, legal experts, and other relevant individuals, and visiting the affected regions to get a ground-level picture of how the Act was functioning.

The very formation of the committee was politically significant. It represented an official acknowledgment from the central government that the law, as it stood, was generating grievances serious enough to warrant scrutiny at the highest level. The committee visited northeastern states, held consultations, and submitted its report in June 2005 – after approximately two years of deliberations.

What the committee found and recommended 🔗

The committee’s findings were striking. The Reddy Committee described AFSPA as “a symbol of oppression, an object of hate, and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness.” That language, coming from a body set up by the government itself, carried enormous weight. The committee concluded that despite the powers conferred under the Act not being absolute in legal theory, the Act in practice had generated deep resentment among the people of the northeastern states and was fundamentally incompatible with a democratic, rights-based society.

The core recommendation: repeal AFSPA 🔗

The Reddy Committee recommended that AFSPA should be repealed. This was unambiguous. However, the committee did not suggest that the state be left without legal tools to manage insurgency. Instead, it recommended that the essential operational provisions – allowing deployment of armed forces and granting them certain powers – be incorporated into the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), rather than remaining in a separate, stigmatised law. The thinking was in line with a longstanding view among legal scholars: that special repressive laws create a perception of discrimination among the communities they target, whereas incorporating necessary provisions into general law avoids that stigma.

Specific operational safeguards proposed 🔗

The committee proposed several concrete structural changes to govern how armed forces would be deployed in disturbed areas going forward. If a situation warranted it, the state government could request the Union government to deploy the army for a maximum period of six months. After six months, the situation would need to be reviewed, and any extension would require parliamentary approval. This was a significant departure from the existing system, where “disturbed area” declarations could be renewed indefinitely without any parliamentary oversight. The committee also proposed the creation of Grievance Cells to receive and communicate the outcomes of complaints made against armed forces personnel – a mechanism intended to provide some avenue of redress for civilians alleging abuse.

The question of accountability 🔗

One of the most deeply criticised aspects of AFSPA had always been Section 6, which requires prior sanction from the central government before any prosecution can be initiated against armed forces personnel. This provision effectively shielded military personnel from criminal accountability in ordinary courts. Critics argued this created a culture of near-complete impunity – enabling alleged extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and other grave violations without consequence. The Reddy Committee was mindful of this concern, and its proposal to bring relevant provisions under the UAPA – which does not carry the same blanket immunity – was partly an attempt to reduce this shield.

Why the report stayed on the shelf 🔗

Despite the committee’s clear findings, the government did not act. For nearly a decade, the report existed in a kind of bureaucratic limbo – neither accepted nor formally rejected. The UPA government (2004-2014) repeatedly avoided taking a decision, caught between the military establishment’s strong opposition and civil society’s demand for accountability. The army and security agencies argued that withdrawing AFSPA or diluting its protections would demoralise the forces operating in hostile conditions, reduce their effectiveness, and expose them to legally vexatious complaints.

It was only after a decade that the Government of India formally moved to reject the recommendation – reportedly after the Ministry of Home Affairs under the NDA government decided to close the matter. The 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission, headed by Veerappa Moily, had also endorsed the Reddy Committee’s findings, but that too had no practical outcome.

Critics of the committee’s report also pointed out an internal contradiction: recommending repeal of AFSPA while simultaneously suggesting its powers be folded into the UAPA did not amount to real reform. As legal analyst K. Balagopal argued, the safeguards suggested were not new – they had already been read into AFSPA by the Supreme Court in the landmark NPMHR v. Union of India (1998) judgment, and the D.K. Basu guidelines on arrest procedures already applied. In substance, moving these provisions to the UAPA without eliminating the powers themselves meant the core problem – unchecked authority and near-immunity – remained intact.

Other review efforts: a pattern of recommendations ignored 🔗

The Reddy Committee was not alone in calling for change. A pattern emerged across multiple institutional reviews – each recommending reform, each largely unimplemented.

The 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission (2007) 🔗

The ARC’s 5th report on public order explicitly recommended repealing AFSPA, noting that the Act had deepened the sense of alienation among the people of northeastern India and that removing it would help address those grievances. This recommendation, like the Reddy report, was never acted upon.

The Santosh Hegde Committee (2013) 🔗

A high-powered commission headed by retired Supreme Court judge N. Santosh Hegde was constituted in January 2013 to probe six encounter deaths in Manipur. The committee found that none of the six individuals killed had any criminal records, raising serious questions about the legitimacy of the encounters. It recommended fixing a three-month time frame for the central government to decide whether to prosecute security personnel in cases of alleged extrajudicial killings – a measure aimed at ending the indefinite delays that effectively resulted in impunity. The commission further noted that AFSPA was an impediment to achieving lasting peace in the region.

The Justice Verma Committee (2013) 🔗

The Justice Verma Committee, which was constituted after the 2012 Delhi gang rape case to recommend amendments to criminal law, also touched upon AFSPA. It specifically stated that sexual violence committed by members of the armed forces or uniformed personnel in conflict areas must be brought under the purview of ordinary criminal law – not shielded by special legislation. The report called for an urgent review of the continuation of AFSPA and similar legal protocols in internal conflict areas.

The current state of AFSPA: partial withdrawals, ongoing tensions 🔗

While the Act has not been repealed, there have been partial rollbacks in recent years. AFSPA is currently fully applicable in 31 districts of four northeastern states and partially in 12 districts, along with the entirety of Jammu and Kashmir. The central government has from time to time reduced the geographical footprint of the Act – withdrawing it from Imphal Municipal Council areas and from several districts in Assam, Manipur, and Nagaland – in recognition of improved security conditions. These step-by-step reductions suggest an implicit acknowledgment that the Act’s blanket application has been excessive, even if the government has stopped short of outright repeal.

The question of constitutionality was settled by the Supreme Court as far back as 1998, when it upheld AFSPA as constitutionally valid in Naga People’s Movement of Human Rights v. Union of India – but with important caveats. The Court read into the Act several conditions and limitations to make it consistent with the Constitution, including the requirement to use minimum force and to hand over arrested persons to the nearest police station without delay. Constitutional validity, however, does not resolve the political and human rights critique: that a law can be technically legal while still being unjust in its application.

Why the reform debate still matters 🔗

The story of the Jeevan Reddy Committee is not just a historical episode. It is a case study in how a democratic state handles the tension between national security and fundamental rights. The committee’s formation was itself a democratic achievement – proof that sustained public pressure and civil society advocacy can force the state to turn its gaze inward. But the failure to implement its recommendations raises harder questions about the limits of institutional review when security establishments resist change.

The legal framework governing armed forces in disturbed areas directly affects the rights of millions of ordinary citizens – their right to life, to liberty, to access justice. When laws that curtail these rights are placed beyond accountability through immunity provisions, the legitimacy of the security apparatus in the eyes of the affected population erodes. The northeastern states have for decades experienced this erosion, which is why leaders from the region, human rights bodies, and multiple judicial committees have continued to call for reform.

The debate around AFSPA is ultimately a debate about what kind of state India wants to be – one that resolves conflict through legal accountability and political dialogue, or one that relies on exceptional powers extended indefinitely. The Reddy Committee answered that question clearly. What the government does with that answer remains a work in progress.

What do you think? If a government-commissioned committee recommends repealing a law on human rights grounds and that recommendation is ignored for over a decade, does the review process serve any real purpose – or does it merely create the appearance of accountability? And should the constitutional validity of a law like AFSPA, upheld by the Supreme Court, be the end of the conversation about whether it is just?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_(Special_Powers)_Act
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irom_Chanu_Sharmila
3. https://amnesty.org.nz/india-end-irom-sharmila-s-hunger-strike-opportunity-repeal-afspa/
4. https://www.omct.org/en/resources/urgent-interventions/deterioration-of-the-state-of-health-of-ms-irom-sharmila-chanu
5. https://www.mha.gov.in/MHA1/Par2017/pdfs/par2014-pdfs/ls-251114/34.pdf
6. https://www.gatewayhouse.in/time-to-repeal-afspa/
7. https://www.insightsonindia.com/security-issues/armed-forces-special-powers-act-afspa/experts-recommendation-on-afspa/
8. https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/irom-chanu-sharmila-rearrested
9. https://tilakmarg.com/opinion/justice-jeeven-reddy-committee-suggestion-to-repeal-armed-forces-special-powers-act-to-be-rejected/
10. https://balagopal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-Jeevan-Reddy-Committee-Report-on-AFSPA-The-evil-is-left-intact..pdf
11. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/centre-extends-afspa-in-nagaland