Guwahati: After the Centre turned it down, the Assam government on Thursday, for the first time, extended the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) for another six months, thereby declaring the entire state as a “disturbed area”.

Disclosing that the Government of India, after thoroughly reviewing the overall law and order situation, had turned down the state government’s plea to extend it after August 31, security sources said that the Assam government had on Tuesday extended its term through an executive order and informed all the security agencies operating in the state.

Noting that the AFSPA was promulgated in Assam in November 1990 by the Centre and the entire state was declared a “disturbed area” as the activities of Ulfa were at their peak, the sources said this time the Centre was not keen to extend AFSPA across the entire state.

It is significant that AFSPA was lifted from Punjab in 1997 and Tripura removed it in 2015, whereas Maoist-infested states like Jharkhand and Uttarakhand are handling law and order without using AFSPA.

It is now in force in Jammu and Kashmir and six Northeast states — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland.

(Deccan Chronicle)