SPECIAL POWERS ACT notes

SPECIAL POWERS ACT

The Special Powers Act was passed in 1958 for the states of of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura and in 1990 another Special Powers Act was passed by the Parliament to be applied to Jammu and Kashmir.

This Law was created and implemented to fight the rising number of militancy in the disturbed areas

Both these Act are very similar.

Main points of these Acts:

n This Act is applied to disturbed areas. Disturbed area’ means an area which is for the time being declared by notification under section 3 to be a disturbed area. The Governor has the power to declare an area disturb. An area may be called disturbed if there is a presence of terrorists activities against the Government threatening law and order and causing terror amoung people; and activities disrupting the sovereignty and integrity of India.

n Special Power given to the Armed Forces; Any commissioned, warrarnt, non commission officer is considered as an armed personal.

--- if he considers it necessary to fire or kill a person to maintain law and order (coz they were threatening law and order)

--- if he is of the may destroy arms dumps, fortified postion, training camps or shelter from where armed attack may be made

--- he can make arrest without any warrant.

--- he can enter any premises and search without any warrant a person who may have committed or is under suspicion of committing an offense

--- he can stop, search and seize any vehicle which is suspected of carrying a person who may have committed or is under suspicion of committing an offense.

CRITISM AGAINST THESE LAWS

This law is seen as draconian laws. These laws given to much power to the armed forced without sufficient checks and balance (check and balance are the beauty of Indian democracy).

United Nations Human Rights Committee, 1991 questioned the constitutional validity of this law and asked how could it be justifies under Article 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

There have been a vast number of protestations against this law in the places of these implementation.

On the areas of this implementation of this law there have been high cases of disappearance, a high number of tortures on citizens by the Army. The army has misused their power and killed, tortured, raped and have got away scot free with these crimes.

CHANGE

Each of the protestation in these areas have garnered around a particular incident where there are discrepancies can be easily pointed out. For example in J&K there is the Shopian case.

While SPA still has a strong hold in the North-East States, it has loosened in J&K with only particular districts falling under this Act. This is mainly attributed to the media exposure given to the SPA in J&K while it is ignorned in the North-East States