Antony backs Army on AFSPA

Defence minister AK Antony has told Army chief General VK Singh that he is on the same page as the Indian Army on its opposition to the withdrawal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from selected areas of J&K. Who stands where

Updated on: Oct 28, 2011, 01:49:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Defence minister AK Antony has told Army chief General VK Singh that he is on the same page as the Indian Army on its opposition to the withdrawal of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from selected areas of J&K and will not allow any adverse decision that will affect the morale of troops in the strife-torn state.

Last week, Antony and General VK Singh had a detailed discussion on CM Omar Abdullah's AFSPA withdrawal proposal with the latter impressing on the minister that it would be impossible for the army to operate in J&K without the cover of the Act as the force would get bogged down in legal battles.

General Singh has told the defence minister that limited withdrawal of AFSPA is only to score political points against opposition parties as no such demand has been raised by people. He also made it clear that it would be politically impossible to impose the Act again in case it was withdrawn.

However, the view of defence ministry and the army is not shared by the home ministry, which wants the AFSPA to be lifted from certain areas as it will be a confidence-building measure for people of the state and will send a strong signal to the international community.

The army top brass is extremely cut up with Sheikh Mustafa Kamal, uncle of Omar and senior National Conference leader, for broadly hinting that the military was behind the grenade attacks in Srinagar on October 25.

Kamal, Hazratbal MLA and NC president Farooq Abdullah's brother, was forced to eat his words after northern army commander Lt General KT Parnaik called up Abdullah and told him that such remarks were unacceptable. Omar told Gen Parnaik that he had no clue about Kamal's statement as he was in Delhi but later forced his uncle to issue a retraction.

Although Omar is trying to mend fences with the army by praising its role in curbing militancy in J&K, the top brass is not impressed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More