The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act -- the AFSPA -- is not the medicine for militancy and it is there to "extract resources" from Manipur, Irom Sharmila's party PRJA has said.
To drive home the point, the Peoples' Resurgence and Justice Alliance (PRJA) said that there were only four insurgent groups when the draconian AFSPA was introduced in Manipur in the 1980s and the number has gone up to 32 since.
The PRJA, which was formed by Sharmila after she ended her 16-year-long hunger strike against the AFSPA in August last year, is making its electoral debut in this Assembly polls, fielding candidates in three of the state's 60 seats.
"The AFSPA is not about militancy and counter-insurgency.
It is something beyond that. To deal with militancy and counter-insurgency, you may need laws and programmes but the AFSPA is not one of them.
"In the 1980s when the AFSPA was introduced in Manipur, there were only four insurgent groups and in 2016 there were more than 32 groups reported... The AFSPA is not the medicine for militancy. It has clearly multiplied the disease. The AFSPA is there to extract resources from Manipur," PRJA convener Erendro Leichombam said in an email interview to
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
