NEW DELHI: Former Governor of Jammu and Kashmir NN Vohra on Wednesday hailed Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement on the Centre’s “plans to pull back troops and leave law and order to the J&K Police”.
Vohra, who was J&K Governor from 2008 to 2018 before the state was bifurcated into union territories, welcomed Shah’s intention to revoke the application of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in J&K and hoped that the Union Government would follow a similar approach and withdraw the military from other areas in the country where it may have been deployed for long periods to carry out internal security duties.
“The state police must be made to discharge their primary duty of maintaining public order and free the military to return to its essential duties,” Vohra said.
A national security protagonist, Vohra had, besides serving in the Himalayan border areas after the 1962 India-China conflict, functioned as the Punjab Home Secretary during the period of serious disturbances after the Operation Bluestar and, later, as the Defence Secretary and the Home Secretary with the Government of India.
Ever since his retirement he has been strongly propagating the need for the promulgation of the National Security Policy under which the Union and the states should come to meaningful understanding for the state governments to effectively discharge their foremost responsibility of maintaining public order within their realms, to ensure that this crucial duty may be handed over to the military only in very exceptional circumstances. Vohra has been repeatedly stressing the hazards of the military being fettered with any task which dilutes its attention from its primary duty of safeguarding the territorial integrity of the country.
He was responding to Shah’s interview where he said the government had plans to pull back troops in the UT and leave law and order to the J&K Police alone.