The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), which has deployed about 70,000 personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, is amenable to the withdrawal of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from certain areas as it feels the "immunity'' to its men under other law is "enough" to fight militants when "overall security situation has improved" in the state. The paramilitary force that is also at the forefront in fighting terrorism...

-The Times of India   With the government struggling to craft its stance on the contentious question of withdrawal of Armed Forces ( Special Powers) Act from some parts of J&K, the BJP joined the debate by warning the Centre against diluting the law. As the defence ministry insists that the views of the Army and the Unified Command need to be heeded on whether to withdraw AFSPA from certain areas in...

Ordinance makes SPOs an ‘auxiliary force' In the last week of July, the Chhattisgarh government passed an ordinance that sought to dispel the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the State's 5,269 registered Special Police Officers (SPOs) who operate as the vanguard of the government's battle against the guerilla army of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). On July 5, the Supreme Court directed the State government to “immediately cease and desist...

Fighting the insurgency will need careful planning and sustained innovation. But New Delhi seems to have only big sacks of cash and even bigger words. Eleven weeks after the annihilation of an entire company of the Central Reserve Police Force in a Maoist ambush in April 2010 near the village of Tarmetla — the largest single loss India has ever suffered in a counter-insurgency campaign — Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...

A war has broken out in some parts of east-central India, especially some regions of the Dandakaranya forests that span across the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh. Reportedly, there are thousands of Maoist guerrillas armed with sophisticated weapons confronting a vast array of paramilitary forces assembled by the government of India. Caught in the crossfire are millions of poor, marginalised and historically isolated adivasis. Their habitat, in which...