Imphal, April 28: The Manipur Human Rights Commission today recommended repeal of the controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, saying the act was an“unreasonable, unjust, unfair and unconstitutional piece of legislation”.

The four-page recommendation sent to the ministry of home affairs today said: “AFSPA has discriminatory application likely to segregate the Northeast from the rest of India.”

Manipur has been on the boil for several years over repealing of the act. Irom Sharmila has been on a fast unto death since November 2000 demanding scrapping of the act. However, this is for the first time that the Manipur Human Rights Commission has intervened and called for scrapping of the act.

This is the third recommendation after Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy Commission and Administrative Reforms Commissions made similar recommendations separately.

The Manipur rights panel said the act was a violation of the right to equality and equal protection guaranteed by Article 14 of the Constitution. “Insurgency in a democratic set-up can be ultimately solved by political means and not by bullet,” it said.

The commission argued that the ambiguous definition of “disturbed areas” given under Section 3 of the act became the source of undefined and unlimited power on the part of the government to declare an area disturbed so as to enforce the law. The army act is enforced after a certain area is declared disturbed under Section 3 of the act. It also said powers given to armed forces to the rank of a non-commissioned officer to use force even to the extent of causing death was denial of right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. It also charged that giving protection to the persons acting under the army act against provision of prosecution without sanction of the Centre had become “anachronistic, outdated and obsolete”.

The Manipur commission also cited the recommendations made by the Reddy Review Committee for repeal of the act or replacement of the act by an appropriate legislation based on fundamental human rights.

The Manmohan Singh government constituted the Reddy Commission after Manipur went up in flames when Thangjam Manorama was killed after being allegedly raped in Assam Rifles custody in Imphal East in July 2004.

The state commission also argued that the recommendation for repeal of the act by the fifth report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission was acceptable.

The recommendation said the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination also urged India to repeal the army act and replace it with a more humane one. Another insurgency-affected state, Nagaland, has been campaigning against the act since 1982 when the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights filed a case in the Supreme Court for its repeal in 1982.

“This act has aggravated the situation in the Northeast,” the convenor of the rights panel, N. Venuh, said. “This act can never curb militancy from the Northeast,” the rights activist added.

There is no state human rights commission in Nagaland.