Naga People's Movement of Human Rights v. Union of India (AFSPA case)

Naga People's Movement of Human Rights v. Union of India is the Constitution Bench judgment of the Supreme Court of India, delivered on 27 November 1997 and reported at AIR 1998 SC 431 / (1998) 2 SCC 109, that adjudicated the constitutional validity of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA). The petitions, clubbed together, challenged the statute and its parent enactment, the Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) Special Powers Ordinance promulgated in 1958 to address insurgency in the Naga Hills. The petitioners argued that Parliament lacked legislative competence, that the Act offended the federal scheme by allowing the Union to deploy armed forces in aid of civil power without the consent of the affected State, and that the sweeping powers it conferred violated Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. A five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice J. S. Verma resolved these questions, drawing its analysis from Entry 2 of List I (Union List) and Entry 1 of List II (State List) read with Article 248 and Article 355.

The Court first settled the question of legislative competence. It held that AFSPA was traceable to Entry 2 of the Union List — "Naval, military and air forces; any other armed forces of the Union" — and that the deployment of armed forces in aid of civil power was a legitimate exercise of Union authority. The bench rejected the contention that the law fell within Entry 1 of the State List ("public order"), reasoning that once the situation deteriorates beyond ordinary law-and-order maintenance into the realm requiring military assistance, the matter migrates to the Union sphere. The Court invoked Article 355, which casts a duty on the Union to protect every State against internal disturbance, as a constitutional foundation legitimising central intervention, while clarifying that Article 355 alone is not the source of legislative power but reinforces the competence located in Entry 2.

On the procedural architecture, the judgment scrutinised Section 3, which empowers the Governor of a State or the Central Government to declare an area "disturbed". The Court read down the provision to require that such a declaration must not be of indefinite duration; it directed that the necessity of continuing a disturbed-area notification be reviewed periodically, suggesting a six-month interval, and held that the declaration is subject to judicial review. On Sections 4 and 5 — which authorise a commissioned, warrant or non-commissioned officer to fire upon or use force, to arrest without warrant, and to enter and search premises — the Court held the powers valid but not absolute, requiring that an arrested person be handed over to the nearest police station "with the least possible delay" as mandated by the statute itself and by Article 22.

A central and enduring feature of the judgment is its annexation of the army's own "Ten Commandments" or List of Dos and Don'ts, which the Court made binding and enforceable. These instructions require, among other things, that operations be conducted in cooperation with civil authority, that women be searched only by women, that minimum force be used, that no torture be inflicted, and that property not be destroyed without justification. The Court further directed that complaints of misuse be investigated and that compensation be paid where excesses are established, embedding accountability mechanisms within an otherwise immunity-laden statute. The bench held that the protection of Section 6 — barring prosecution of armed forces personnel without prior sanction of the Central Government — did not confer blanket immunity, since the sanctioning authority must apply its mind.

The judgment's holdings have been tested by named contemporary developments. The Justice B. P. Jeevan Reddy Committee (2005) recommended repeal of AFSPA, advice the Union Home Ministry declined to implement. In Extra Judicial Execution Victim Families Association v. Union of India (2016, concerning Manipur), the Supreme Court returned to AFSPA's terrain, holding that the use of "excessive or retaliatory force" is impermissible even in a disturbed area and that alleged extrajudicial killings are amenable to judicial scrutiny, thereby narrowing the immunity that Section 6 was read to provide. The 2015 Naga Framework Agreement signed in New Delhi between the Government of India and the NSCN (IM), and the partial withdrawal of AFSPA from districts of Nagaland, Assam and Manipur announced by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2022 following the Oting (Mon district) killings of December 2021, reflect the political afterlife of the legal questions the case framed.

The case must be distinguished from adjacent concepts. It is not a repeal or strike-down judgment in the manner of cases invalidating ordinances; AFSPA survived intact, distinguishing this decision from outcomes such as the striking down of Section 66A in Shreya Singhal. It is also distinct from the imposition of President's Rule under Article 356, which dissolves State governance, whereas a disturbed-area declaration under AFSPA leaves the elected State government in office while supplementing civil power with military force. The doctrine of "aid of civil power" central here differs from a declaration of National Emergency under Article 352, which suspends constitutional governance more broadly.

For the working practitioner — the civil services aspirant, internal-security desk officer, or human-rights researcher — Naga People's Movement remains the foundational precedent on the constitutional balance between national security and fundamental rights in India's insurgency-affected periphery. It establishes that exceptional military powers are constitutionally permissible but judicially supervised, that immunity is conditional rather than absolute, and that the binding Dos and Don'ts furnish a justiciable standard of conduct. Its continuing relevance to UPSC General Studies Paper III, to debates over AFSPA's selective withdrawal, and to the still-unresolved tension between Article 21 and counter-insurgency makes it indispensable reading.