Centre urges Supreme Court to review its order on Afspa

NEWDELHI: The government wants the Supreme Court to reconsider a landmark decision that dramatically slashed the army’s immunity in India’s conflict regions and ordered probes into hundreds of alleged extra-judicial killings.

The Centre filed on Wednesday a petition that said the SC’s 2016 verdict – which restrained the army from using “excessive or retaliatory force” under a controversial law – was affecting daily operations in areas such as Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, both regions torn by militancy.

“It’s an issue of national security,” attorney general Mukul Rohatgi told a bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar, urging him to list the petition for an open-court hearing.

The CJI said he would look into the request.

A curative petition is the last legal recourse available after a litigant exhausts all remedies such as appeals and review petition. Chances of success are rare but in recent years, the court has admitted some pleas that raised important constitutional matters.

The SC judgement was seen as the strongest judicial rebuke yet of the army’s special shoot-to-kill powers, which trace their origins to a British-era ordinance used to suppress the Quit India Movement of 1942. The army denies misusing the law.

The Centre strongly defended its military actions in conflict areas and said the Indian army was not a “rogue Army.” Any proactive action in maintaining peace and law and order was curtailed by the verdict.

SC virtually abrogated the Afspa provisions that were upheld by a constitution bench. “Any retaliatory measure to neutralise terrorists/militants would be branded as excessive force or an extra judicial execution which runs counter to the very purpose of Afspa,” the petition stated.

The 2016 verdict was cheered by activists, who have long pointed to a lack of oversight of military personnel. The decision had come on petitions demanding an investigation into 1,528 alleged cases of “extra-judicial killings” by the army in the North-East state.

The petitioners complained of the abuse of special powers available to the army officers under Afspa, which shields troops from prosecution and is in force in parts of the northeast and Kashmir.But, according to the Centre the court’s interpretation of the law was not in consonance with the ground realities under which the armed forces were posted in Manipur.