AFSPA

Armed Forces Special Powers Ordinance was promulgated by the British in 1942 to suppress the quit India movement.

Modeled on these lines, four ordinances—the Bengal Disturbed Areas (Special Powers of Armed Forces) Ordinance; the Assam Disturbed Areas (Special Powers of Armed Forces)Ordinance; the East Bengal Disturbed Areas (Special Powers of Armed Forces) Ordinance; the United provinces Disturbed Areas(Special Powers of Armed Forces) Ordinance were invoked by the central government to deal with the internal security situation in the country in 1947 which arouse out of Partition of India.

Armed Forces Special Powers (Assam and Manipur) Act, 1958

In 1951, the Naga National Council(NNC) reported that it conducted a "free and fair plebiscite" in which about 99 per cent Nagas voted for a ‘Free Sovereign Naga Nation’.^[7] There was a boycott of first general election of 1952 which later, extended to boycott of government schools and officials.^[8] In order to deal with the situation, the Assam government imposed the Assam Maintenance of Public Order (Autonomous District) Act in the Naga Hills in 1953 and intensified police action against the rebels. When the situation worsened, Assam deployed the Assam Rifles in the Naga Hills and enacted the Assam Disturbed Areas Act of 1955, providing a legal framework for the paramilitary forces and the armed state police to combat insurgency in the region.But the Assam Rifles and the state armed police could not contain the Naga rebellion and the rebel Naga Nationalist Council(NNC) formed a parallel government "The Federal Government of Nagaland" on 23 March 1956.^[9] The Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) Special Powers Ordinance 1958 was promulgated by the President Dr. Rajendra Prasad on 22 May 1958. It was replaced by Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) special Powers Act, 1958 on 11 September 1958.

Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) Special Powers (Amendment) Act, 1972

The Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) Special Powers Act,1958 empowered only the Governors of the States and the Administrators of the Union Territories to declare areas in the concerned State or the Union Territory as 'disturbed'. The reason for conferring such a power as per "Objects and Reasons'" appended to the Bill was that, "Keeping inview the duty of the Union under Article 355 of the Constitution, inter alia, to protect every State against internal disturbance, it is considered desirable that the Central government should also have power to declare areas as 'disturbed', to enable its armed forces to exercise the special powers".^[10] The territorial scope of Act also expanded to the five states of the North-East, - Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura and to the Union Territories Arunachal Pradesh andMizoram. 

In addition, the words, "The Armed Forces (Assam and Manipur) Special Powers Act, 1958" were substituted by "Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958", getting the acronym of AFSPA, 1958.