Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), was passed on September 11, 1958, by the Parliament of India. It conferred special powers upon armed forces in what the act calls "disturbed areas" in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. It was later extended to Jammu and Kashmir as The Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act, 1990 in July 1990.

The Act

The Articles in the Constitution of India empower state governments to declare a state of emergency due to one or more of the following reasons:

• Failure of the administration and the local police to tackle local issues.
• Return of (central) security forces leads to return of miscreants/erosion of the "peace dividend".
• The scale of unrest or instability in the state is too large for local forces to handle.

In such cases, it is the prerogative of the state government to call for central help. In most cases, for example during elections, when the local police may be stretched too thin to simultaneously handle day-to-day tasks, the central government obliges by sending in the CRPF. Continued unrest, like in the cases of militancy and insurgence, and especially when borders are threatened, are the armed forces resorted to.

In a civilian setting, soldiers have...
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