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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Anti-insurgency squad bar only in one state

Anti-insurgency squad bar only in one state

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published Published on Nov 19, 2011   modified Modified on Nov 19, 2011

-The Telegraph

 

The Supreme Court today diluted its July order asking the Centre and states to stop using special police officers in their war against Naxalites or other internal terror, clarifying it would now be confined only to Chhattisgarh.

The Centre had urged the top court to clarify or modify its July 5, 2011, order saying it would “hamper” internal security measures in states and lead to “chaos”.

Besides Chhattisgarh, there are SPOs in Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, the north-eastern states and Jammu and Kashmir. The Centre argued, through solicitor-general Rohinton Nariman, that the order should be confined to Chhattisgarh.

But the state opposed it, saying it could not be treated differently and that its internal security too would be impacted by any such move. But the court shrugged off its objections.

Nariman said the top court’s July 5 order had criticised the Centre for not doing much. But, he contended, the Centre could not have done much without incurring criticism that it was interfering with a state subject.

He admitted that there was no law under which SPOs had been created. Chhattisgarh had a 2007 police act which provided for their creation, he said.

A Supreme Court bench had on July 5 asked the Centre to immediately desist from funding SPOs being used in the war against Naxalites in many states.

States were then asked to forthwith cease using them in the frontlines of the internal war, confine them to routine police work and withdraw all arms licences to them.

But the home ministry filed a petition seeking clarification or modification of the order. The Centre also sought expunging of critical remarks against its socio-economic policies and its insistence that the only way to rule was with an “iron fist”.

The top court had asked the Centre and the states not to treat Naxalism as a law-and-order problem but as a socio-economic problem. Acknowledging that strong-arm tactics may be efficient in tackling the problem, the court said an “efficient means” was not always the right means.

“… the fight against Maoist/Naxalite violence cannot be conducted purely as a mere law and order problem to be confronted by whatever means the state can muster. The primordial problem lies deep within the socio-economic policies pursued by the state on a society that was already endemically, and horrifically, suffering from gross inequalities,” it said.

Today when the Centre’s application came up, the lawyer for the PIL petitioners, including Nandini Sundar and Ramachandra Guha, conceded that issues relating to SPOs in other states were never discussed during the hearing.

Their counsel, Ashok Desai, resisted any attempt to change the reasons behind the July 5 order but conceded that the court order could be diluted to restrict its operation to Chhattisgarh. Accordingly, a two-judge bench modified the order.

Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh told agencies in Delhi that SPOs in his state had been absorbed as regulars in a special auxiliary force. “We have followed the Supreme Court directions. Now there are no SPOs.”

Guha and Sundar had in their PIL accused both the Naxalites and the Salwa Judum of gross rights violations and demanded that the court intervene to protect innocent tribals caught in the crossfire.

They had also demanded that the court disband the Salwa Judum. The state reacted by changing the private militia’s name and calling members SPOs.

In its July 5 order, the top court slammed the state for violating Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, by arming unskilled and illiterate tribal youth, to take on the vastly superior Maoists for a pitiable honorarium.

“… this policy of using local youth jointly devised by the Union and the states facing Maoist insurgency, as implemented in Chhattisgarh, the young tribals have literally become cannon fodder in the killing fields of Dantewada and other districts of Chhattisgarh,” the bench observed.

The court said it was the duty of the state to protect citizens from any menace and that should be done by trained police and security forces capable of working within the constitutional framework.


The Telegraph, 19 November, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111119/jsp/nation/story_14772221.jsp


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