GS Paper: GS3-20.Linkages between Development and Spread of Extremism.

A total of 10 members of Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and other proscribed outfits have been designated as terrorists by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

What is Unlawful (Activities) Prevention Act (UAPA)?

• The UAPA is aimed at effective prevention of unlawful activities associations in India.
• Its main objective was to make powers available for dealing with activities directed against the integrity and sovereignty of India
• It is an upgrade on the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act TADA, which was allowed to lapse in 1995 and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) was repealed in 2004.
• It was originally passed in 1967 under the then Congress government led by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
• Till 2004, “unlawful” activities referred to actions related to secession and cession of territory. Following the 2004 amendment, “terrorist act” was added to the list of offences.

Designation of Terrorists

• The Centre had amended UAPA, 1967, in August 2019 to include the provision of designating an individual as a terrorist.
• Before this amendment, only organisations could be designated as terrorist outfits.
• Section 15 of the UAPA defines a “terrorist act” as any act committed with intent to threaten or likely to threaten the unity, integrity, security, economic security, or sovereignty of India or with intent to strike terror or likely to strike terror in the people or any section of the people in India or in any foreign country.
• The original Act dealt with “unlawful” acts related to secession; anti-terror provisions were introduced in 2004.

Who makes such designation?

• The UAPA (after 2019 amendment)seeks to empower the central government to designate an individual a “terrorist” if they are found committing, preparing for, promoting, or involved in an act of terror.
• A similar provision already exists in Part 4 and 6 of the legislation for organizations that can be designated as a “terrorist organisations”.

How individuals are declared terrorists?

• The central government may designate an individual as a terrorist through a notification in the official gazette, and add his name to the schedule supplemented to the UAPA Bill.
• The government is not required to give an individual an opportunity to be heard before such a designation.
• At present, in line with the legal presumption of an individual being innocent until proven guilty, an individual who is convicted in a terror case is legally referred to as a terrorist.
• While those suspected of being involved in terrorist activities are referred to as terror accused.

What happens when an individual is declared a terrorist?

• The designation of an individual as a global terrorist by the United Nations is associated with sanctions including travel bans, freezing of assets and an embargo against procuring arms.
• The UAPA, however, does not provide any such detail.
• It also does not require the filing of cases or arresting individuals while designating them as terrorists.

Removing the terrorist tag

• The UAPA gives the central government the power to remove a name from the schedule when an individual makes an application.
• The procedure for such an application and the process of decision-making will is decided by the central government.
• If an application filed by an individual declared a terrorist is rejected by the government, the UAPA gives him the right to seek a review within one month after the application is rejected.
• The central government will set up the review committee consisting of a chairperson (a retired or sitting judge of a High Court) and three other members.
• The review committee is empowered to order the government to delete the name of the individual from the schedule that lists “terrorists”, if it considers the order to be flawed.
• Apart from these two avenues, the individual can also move the courts to challenge the government’s order.

 

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Just before the first of the two phases of the Assembly Elections went underway in Manipur, all insurgent groups associated with the Kuki tribes in Manipur said they will vote for a particular political party.

Who are the Kukis?

• The Kukis are an ethnic group including multiple tribes originally inhabiting the North-Eastern states of India such as Manipur, Mizoram and Assam; parts of Burma (now Myanmar), and Sylhet district and Chittagong hill tracts of Bangladesh.
• While Kuki is not a term coined by the ethnic group itself, the tribes associated with it came to be generically called Kuki under colonial rule.
• In Manipur, the various Kuki tribes, living mainly in the hills, currently make up 30% of the total 28.5 lakh population of the State.
• While Churachandpur is their main stronghold, they also have a sizable population in Chandel, Kangpokpi, Tengnoupal and Senapati districts.

Their ethnicity

• The rest of the population of Manipur is made up mainly of two other ethnic groups — the Meiteis or non-tribal, Vaishnavite Hindus who live in the valley region of Manipur, and the Naga tribes, historically at loggerheads with the Kukis, also living in the hilly areas of the State.
• Of the 60 seats in the Manipur Assembly, 40 are held by Meiteis and the rest 20 seats are held by Kukis and Nagas.

What led to the Kuki insurgencies in Manipur?

• The Kuki insurgent groups have been under Suspension of Operation (SoO) since 2005, when they signed an agreement for the same with the Indian Army.
• Later, in 2008, the groups entered a tripartite agreement with the State government and the UPA led Central government to temporarily suspend their operations and give political dialogue a chance.
• Manipur, formerly a princely state including parts of Burma, made the accession into India after Independence, but was only made a full-fledged State in 1972.
• The resentment over the “forceful” inclusion into India and delay in granting statehood led to the rise of various insurgent movements.

Roots of the insurgency

• The roots of Kuki militancy lie in conflicts of ethnic identity.
• First was the demand for self-determination solely for groups belonging to their ethnic fabric, meaning the dream to form a Kukiland.
• The second reason for insurgency lies in the inter-community conflicts between the Kukis and the Nagas in Manipur.
• The Kuki-Naga conflict was started over securing identity and land as some Kuki inhabited areas coincided with Naga inhabited areas.
• Wanting to dominate trade and cultural activities in those areas the two communities often engaged in violent standoffs, with villages being torched, civilians killed and so on.

 

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Six Maoists including four women cadres were killed morning in an “exchange of fire” with a joint team of Telangana and Chhattisgarh police in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh.

What is Naxalism?

• The term ‘Naxal’ derives its name from the village Naxalbari of district Darjeeling in West Bengal, where the movement originated in 1967 under the leadership of Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal.
• It refers to the use of violence to destabilize the state through various communist guerrilla groups.
• Naxalites are far-left radical communists who derive their political ideology from the teachings of Mao Zedong.

History and evolution

• Russian Revolution: Naxalism in India, like any other leftist movement around the globe draws its ideological basis from the Russian revolution.
• Overthrowing Tsarist Regime: Lenin successfully fought against the Czarist Rule through a combination of peasant movement and an armed struggle.
• Marxian ideology of class struggle: The prime intent was to bestow power in the hands of the exploited and marginalized and enforce societal control over governance and nation building.
• Neo-Marxism: After the success of the Lenin-led revolution in Russia, the intellectual class in many countries got inspired. Prominent amongst them were Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong.

Root cause of origin in India

• Corporate exploitation: Since Eastern India is rich in natural resources including forests, minerals and mines, tribal face exploitation and harassment from government and corporate bodies targeting to extract those resources.
• Tribal alienation: Tribal communities have been systematically alienated from their traditional rights over natural resources after independence.
• Livelihood losses: Tribal livelihood is at stake due to depletion of natural resource base.
• Forceful displacement: Forceful displacement from their homeland destroys their traditional governance system.
• Absence of governance: In such exploited areas, the absence of governance becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy since the delivery systems are extinguished through killings and intimidation.
• Foreign provocations: Many of LWE outfits are supported by external forces inimical to India and the Maoists consider such alliances as strategic assets.

Other factors:

1. Oppression and HR violations by Security Forces e.g. AFSPA
2. Violation of Constitutional Protections under PESA and FRA
3. Prevalence of Acute Poverty

Impact of LWE

• Romanticism without a cause: Some sections of the society, especially the younger generation, have romantic illusions about the Maoists, arising out of an incomplete understanding of their ideology of Class –Struggle.
• Extreme violence: Their doctrine glorifies violence as the primary means to overwhelm the existing socio-economic and political structures.
• Destruction of governance mechanism: LWEs aims at creating a vacuum at the grassroots level of the existing governance structures by killing lower-level government officials, police personnel of the local police stations and the people’s representatives of the PRIs.
• Radicalization of youths: After creating a political and governance vacuum, they coerce the local population to join the movement.
• Urban-Maoism: Many extremists have facilitated mass-mobilization in semi-urban and urban areas through ostensibly democratic means often led by well-educated intellectuals.

Outcomes of perpetrating LWE

The Leftist organizations skilfully use state structures and legal processes to further the Maoist agenda and weaken the enforcement regime through:

1. Recruitment of ‘professional revolutionaries’
2. Raising funds for the insurgency
3. Creating urban shelters for underground cadres
4. Providing legal assistance to arrested cadres and
5. Mass- mobilization by agitating over issues of relevance/ convenience

Govt initiatives for LWE affected areas

• Aspirational Districts: The MHA has been tasked with the monitoring of the Aspirational districts programme in 35 LWE affected districts.
• HRD measures: Building of schools under the Eklavya model.
• Road Connectivity Project for LWE affected areas (RRP-II): This aims for improving road connectivity in LWE affected States. Under this, 9279 km of roads and 392 bridges are sanctioned.
• Naxal Surrender Policy: It aims to wean away misguided youth and hardcore naxalites who have strayed into the fold of the naxal movement and cannot find a way back.

SAMADHAN doctrine: It encompasses the entire strategy of government from short-term policy to long-term policy formulated at different levels. SAMADHAN stands for-

• S- Smart Leadership
• A- Aggressive Strategy
• M- Motivation and Training
• A- Actionable Intelligence
• D- Dashboard Based KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and KRAs (Key Result Areas)
• H- Harnessing Technology
• A- Action plan for each Theatre
• N- No access to Financing

Way forward

• Indian counterinsurgency has to work with a dual objective of defeating the insurgents militarily and fully quell the insurgent impulses. This will need institutional overhauls.
• States must do more to synergize their efforts by launching coordinated operations, thereby denying Maoists any space for maneuverability.
• On parallel grounds, it is also important to segregate the population from the insurgents both operationally and ideologically.
• The conflict over the distribution of resources can be mended with economic development.

 

With inputs from:

https://www.mha.gov.in/division_of_mha/left-wing-extremism-division

 

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