Law and order deteriorating in Arunachal Pradesh: Parliamentary Standing Committee Report

A CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI, Aug 7: Arunachal Pradesh has been witnessing a deteriorating law-and-order situation. Disclosing this, a parliamentary standing committee report on Home Affairs has said that in 2012 Arunachal Pradesh accounted for just 5 per cent of the incidents in the entire region. However, in 2017, it accounted for almost 20 per cent of the incidents in the region. “This is an indication of the fact that the security situation has deteriorated in Arunachal Pradesh vis-a-vis the entire north-eastern region,” the committee said in its reports submitted to the Rajya Sabha.

The committee has observed that the State is affected by the spill-over of militant activities of Naga insurgents belonging to the Nagaland-based underground factions of NSCN (NSCN/IM, NSCN/K, NSCN/R and NSCN/KN), in Tirap, Changlang, and Longding districts. The two major NSCN factions, NSCN/IM and NSCN/K, are engaged in a battle for supremacy in these three districts, including forced recruitment to their cadres, area domination, kidnappings and extortions etc. The cadres of Assam-based NDFB(S) and ULFA(I) are also sometimes active, seeking shelter and transit in the State, particularly in the areas bordering Assam and Myanmar. Sometimes, the Assam-based outfits try to affect the political and economic activities in the State with the aim of raising funds through extortions.

The committee, while taking into account the submission of the Ministry of Home Affairs that Arunachal Pradesh has no active insurgent group and is affected by the spill-over activities of the insurgent groups based in Nagaland and Assam, feels that the Government must improve the security situation in the border areas of Arunachal Pradesh that are located along the India-Myanmar border. The committee, while perusing the data of ‘Crime in India–2016’ of cases of kidnapping and extortion in Arunachal Pradesh published by the National Crime Records Bureau, finds the number of such cases to be 146 in 2014, 175 in 2015 and 112 in 2016. “This shows that the number of kidnapping and abduction cases in Arunachal Pradesh remain high vis-à-vis the State’s population,” the standing committee report said.