Armed Forces and Internal Security

The armed forces are not an internal security instrument. They are the instrument of last resort, deployed when the civil power has been overwhelmed, acting in aid of that power and never in substitution for it.

Everything in this section follows from that single proposition — the statutory procedure, the doctrine of minimum force, the requirement of magisterial authorisation, and the reason why prolonged internal deployment is treated as a problem rather than as a solution.

Recall that the constitutional allocation puts defence with the Union and public order with the States, and that Entry 1 of the State List expressly carves the use of Union armed forces out of the States’ public order competence. The armed forces therefore enter the internal security domain only through a defined statutory gateway, and this section describes it.

Aid to Civil Authority

The statutory basis

Since 1 July 2024 the governing provisions are in Chapter XI of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which replaced Chapter X of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. The scheme is a graduated escalation, and the sequence itself embodies the doctrine.

Provision	Content	Former CrPC section
S.148 BNSS	Dispersal by civil force. An Executive Magistrate, the officer in charge of a police station, or a police officer not below the rank of Sub‑Inspector may command an unlawful assembly — or an assembly of five or more persons likely to disturb the public peace — to disperse, and may use civil force to disperse it.	S.129
S.149 BNSS	Use of armed forces. If such an assembly cannot otherwise be dispersed, and it is necessary for public security that it be dispersed, the District Magistrate, or an Executive Magistrate authorised by him, may cause it to be dispersed by the armed forces.	S.130
S.150 BNSS	Officer acting without a magistrate. Where public security is manifestly endangered and no Executive Magistrate can be communicated with, any commissioned or gazetted officer of the armed forces may disperse the assembly with the forces under his command.	S.131
S.151 BNSS	Protection against prosecution. No prosecution for any act done under Sections 148 to 150 may be instituted except with the sanction of the Central Government where the person is an officer or member of the armed forces, and of the State Government in all other cases.	S.132

READ THE SEQUENCE AS A DOCTRINE The four provisions are not a list of alternatives. They are a ladder, and each rung carries a higher threshold than the last. S.148 — civil force first. The police, not the army. S.149 — armed forces only where the assembly cannot otherwise be dispersed and dispersal is necessary for public security, and then only on the authority of a magistrate. The civil authority decides; the military executes. S.150 — the military may act on its own initiative only in the narrow case where public security is manifestly endangered and no magistrate can be reached. This is an exception created by the impossibility of communication, not a general power. S.151 — and even then, the protection from prosecution is not immunity. It is a sanction requirement, and the sanctioning authority for armed forces personnel is the Central Government. The examinable point: the statute encodes civil supremacy at every step. Compare this with Section 4 of AFSPA, where a non‑commissioned officer may use lethal force on his own opinion, with no magistrate in the chain at all. AFSPA is not an application of the aid‑to‑civil‑power doctrine — it is a departure from it, and that is precisely why it is contested.

The doctrine of minimum force

Aid to the civil power is governed by a principle that the courts have made binding rather than merely aspirational. Force must be the minimum necessary to achieve the object; the response must be graduated; a magistrate should be present wherever possible; and force must be withdrawn as soon as the object is achieved.

In Naga People’s Movement of Human Rights (1997) the Supreme Court held that only the minimum force necessary may be used, that due warning is mandatory, and — importantly — that the Army’s own “Dos and Don’ts” are binding, their violation attracting action under the Army Act. In EEVFAM (2016) the Court held that the use of excessive force is impermissible even in a disturbed area and even against militants, and that every death caused by the armed forces must be thoroughly enquired into. Both are treated in the legal architecture.

Forms of assistance

• Aid to civil authority for law and order — dispersal of assemblies, restoration of order, under the BNSS scheme above.
• Counter‑insurgency deployment — sustained operations in notified disturbed areas under AFSPA, principally in the North‑East and Jammu and Kashmir.
• Disaster relief and humanitarian assistance — the most frequent and least controversial form of aid, in which the armed forces are often the only organisation with the logistics, engineering and medical capacity required at scale.
• Maintenance of essential services during strikes or breakdowns, and assistance to civil administration in restoring critical infrastructure.

THE DOCTRINAL COST OF PROLONGED INTERNAL DEPLOYMENT A soldier is trained to defeat an enemy; a policeman is trained to police a citizen. These are different tasks requiring different reflexes, and the difference is not a matter of discipline but of professional formation. Three consequences follow, and they belong in any answer on this topic: Degradation of conventional readiness. Formations committed to internal security for years are not training for the conflict they exist to fight. Risk of alienation. Military methods applied to a civilian population produce exactly the grievance that the Winning Hearts and Minds doctrine is designed to reverse — the adversary’s best recruiting argument, supplied by the state. Erosion of the civil–military boundary. The longer the armed forces perform a civil function, the more normal it becomes that they should, and the harder it is to return the task to the police. This is the strongest argument for police reform: a capable State police is what allows the army to go back to soldiering. The sustained rollback of disturbed‑area notifications should be read in exactly this light — as a reduction in military internal deployment, not merely as a legal adjustment.

Indian Coast Guard

The Indian Coast Guard was established by the Coast Guard Act, 1978, and formally raised on 18 August 1978. It functions under the Ministry of Defence, but its statutory functions are deliberately non‑military — it is a constabulary and law‑enforcement force at sea, not a combat navy, and that distinction is the key to understanding its role.

Statutory functions

• Safety and protection of artificial islands, offshore terminals and installations.
• Protection and assistance to fishermen and mariners in distress; safety of life and property at sea.
• Preservation and protection of the marine environment, including control of marine pollution.
• Assisting Customs and other authorities in anti‑smuggling operations.
• Enforcement of maritime enactments in India’s maritime zones.
• Collection of scientific data and such other functions as may be prescribed.

The post‑26/11 coastal security architecture

The Mumbai attacks of 2008 were mounted from the sea, and the resulting reorganisation created a three‑tier structure in which the ICG occupies the middle tier. This layering is frequently asked and worth memorising.

Marine police — coast & shallow waters

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Coast Guard — territorial waters

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Navy — overall maritime security

Tier	Responsibility
Indian Navy	Overall responsibility for maritime security, including coastal and offshore security. Operates the Joint Operations Centres.
Indian Coast Guard	Responsible for coastal security in territorial waters, including areas patrolled by the coastal police. The Coastal Surveillance Network — a chain of static coastal radars together with automatic identification systems — is a principal ICG asset.
Marine and coastal police	Under State Governments, operating in shallow waters and along the coastline itself, with coastal police stations, jetties and interceptor boats.

Joint capability is exercised through the Sagar Kavach series of coastal security exercises with State agencies and the fishing community, and through Exercise Kavach with the Navy and Air Force.

The acknowledged weaknesses

• Coordination across agencies and jurisdictions. Navy, Coast Guard, marine police, Customs, ports, fisheries departments and State administrations all have a role, spread across Union and State authority. Standard operating procedures, joint exercises and coordination committees have narrowed but not closed the seams.
• Capacity of the coastal police. The State‑level tier is the weakest, with severe personnel shortfalls against sanctioned strength, and gaps in boats, jetties and trained crew. The outermost tier is strong and the innermost tier is weak — which is the wrong way round for an intrusion coming inward.
• Training infrastructure. The ICG has long lacked a dedicated training academy of its own.
• Relations with fishing communities. The coastal security architecture depends on fishermen as its “eyes and ears”; where that relationship is strained by registration requirements, restrictions or enforcement action, the surveillance value is lost.
• Infrastructure delays — land acquisition, barracks and staff quarters at coastal locations.

Coastal security in full, including the Sagarmala and coastal radar programmes and the fishing‑vessel registration regime, is developed under border management.

Chief of Defence Staff and the Department of Military Affairs

The post of Chief of Defence Staff was created in December 2019, with the first incumbent assuming office on 1 January 2020. Recall that a CDS was recommended by the Kargil Review Committee and the Group of Ministers of 2001 — the post was therefore created eighteen years after it was recommended, which is the single best illustration of the gap between reform proposal and reform delivery in Indian security administration.

Simultaneously, a new Department of Military Affairs (DMA) was created within the Ministry of Defence — its fifth department — with the CDS as its Secretary. This was a structural innovation: for the first time a serving military officer heads a department of a Ministry.

Aspect	Content
Rank and status	A four‑star officer; Permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee; Secretary of the Department of Military Affairs.
Role	Principal military adviser to the Defence Minister on tri‑service matters; promotion of jointness and integration across the three services; preparation of defence plans and strategy; budgeting and resource allocation; member of the Defence Acquisition Council; facilitating restructuring into theatre commands.
Terms of service	Three years, extendable, subject to a maximum age limit of 65.
The critical limitation	The CDS does not exercise military command over any of the three services. He coordinates, advises and plans; he does not command. This was a deliberate design choice to secure service acceptance, and it constrains what theatreisation can achieve without further structural change.

For internal security, the CDS matters chiefly through membership of the National Security Council and chairmanship arrangements in the Defence Planning Committee, and through the integrated planning that hybrid and grey‑zone threats demand.

Integrated Theatre Commands

The concept. India currently maintains seventeen single‑service commands — Army, Navy and Air Force commands with different and non‑coincident geographical boundaries. Theatreisation would consolidate these into a small number of integrated theatre commands, each under a single commander exercising operational control over land, air and naval assets within that theatre. India already operates two tri‑service formations: the Andaman and Nicobar Command, created in the post‑Kargil reforms, and the Strategic Forces Command.

The proposed structure

Theatre	Focus	Proposed leadership
Northern Theatre	The China front — the Line of Actual Control across its three sectors.	To be commanded by an Army officer.
Western Theatre	The Pakistan front — the International Boundary and the Line of Control.	To be commanded by an Air Force officer.
Maritime Theatre	The coastline and maritime domain, including island territories and the Indian Ocean Region.	To be commanded by a Navy officer.

Arguments for theatreisation	Arguments against
Unity of command — one commander responsible for all assets in a theatre, eliminating the coordination delay inherent in three parallel chains.	A record of effective cooperation without it — the three services have historically operated together with commendable coordination when required, without formal integration.
Optimum utilisation of theatre‑specific weapon systems, command‑and‑control equipment and combat support elements.	The air power objection, pressed most strongly by the Air Force: its limited, high‑value air assets should not be tied to fixed geographic theatres, because the decisive advantage of airpower is precisely its ability to be concentrated anywhere at short notice.
Logistics and pre‑positioning — procurement, maintenance and forward positioning of equipment for rapid mobilisation in a short‑duration, high‑intensity conflict.	Domain expertise — an integrated commander may not know enough about the two services he did not come from to employ their assets correctly or at the right moment.
Coordination and intelligence sharing within a single theatre chain rather than across three.	Communications have improved — modern networks allow the three services to collaborate and plan without geographic co‑location, reducing the structural case for merger.

WHAT THEATREISATION MEANS FOR INTERNAL SECURITY The debate is conducted almost entirely in terms of conventional warfighting, but three internal security implications follow, and noting them will distinguish an answer: A Maritime Theatre would consolidate command over coastal and offshore security, addressing directly the coordination weakness identified above — the Navy, Coast Guard and marine police interface would sit within a single operational chain rather than across three. Border States would gain a clearer interface. A single theatre commander responsible for a frontier simplifies the relationship between the armed forces, the border guarding CAPFs and the State police in that sector. But theatreisation is designed for conventional conflict, and internal security is a civil function under the Home Ministry. A stronger unified military command structure does not by itself improve the civil–military interface, and could complicate it if theatre boundaries cut across State boundaries and Home Ministry divisional responsibilities. Unity of military command and civil supremacy in internal security are not automatically compatible, and reconciling them is unfinished business.

Women in Combat Roles

The transformation here has been driven by the judiciary rather than conceded by the executive, and the sequence is examinable.

Decision	Holding
Secretary, Ministry of Defence v. Babita Puniya (2020)	Women Short Service Commission officers in the Army are entitled to Permanent Commission and to command appointments. The Court rejected the government’s arguments founded on physiological limitations and on the supposed unwillingness of troops to accept women in command as resting on sex stereotypes, and held that absolute exclusion from command appointments violates Article 14. The Court noted the absence of any data supporting the acceptance argument.
Union of India v. Annie Nagaraja (2020)	Extended Permanent Commission to women officers in the Navy.
Lt. Col. Nitisha v. Union of India (2021)	Held that the evaluation criteria applied to women seeking Permanent Commission were indirectly discriminatory — facially neutral standards producing disproportionate exclusion — and required correction, with consequences for pension and service status.
NDA admission (2021)	The Supreme Court permitted women to sit the National Defence Academy examination; women have been admitted from 2022.

The current position

• Permanent Commission is now granted to women across twelve arms and services in the Army, including the medical branches.
• Combat aviation: induction of women as fighter pilots, begun on an experimental basis in 2015, was made a permanent scheme in 2022.
• Infantry and artillery roles have been opened to women since 2023.
• As of early 2026, 158 women cadets had joined the National Defence Academy.
• In June 2026, nine women cadets became the first to pass out of the Indian Military Academy with direct Permanent Commission — the first batch of women officers commissioned without first serving under the Short Service Commission route. This closes the last major structural asymmetry in the officer entry pathway.

THE COMPARISON WORTH DRAWING Set this against the record of the Central Armed Police Forces. In the armed forces, formal barriers to women’s participation were removed by judicial compulsion, and representation has followed steadily as entry pathways opened. In the CAPFs, the executive itself set an ambitious 33 per cent reservation — and achievement stands at about 4.4 per cent. The lesson is not that quotas fail and litigation succeeds. It is that opening a pathway and building the conditions to walk it are different projects. The armed forces were compelled to open the pathway and then had to build the training, accommodation and career structures behind it. The CAPFs declared the outcome without building the infrastructure, posting policy or recruitment pipeline that would produce it. Policy that specifies a destination without financing the road produces unfilled posts, not representation.

Agnipath and the Force Structure Debate

The Agnipath scheme, introduced in 2022, recruits soldiers designated Agniveers for a four‑year term, at the end of which up to 25 per cent of each batch may be retained for permanent regular service. The remainder leave with a lump‑sum payment and without pension.

Rationale advanced	Criticism made
Reduces the pension burden, which consumes a large and rising share of the defence budget and crowds out modernisation.	Four years is too short for technical proficiency in specialised trades, where basic operational competence may itself take three years or more.
Lowers the average age of the force, producing a younger, fitter and more technologically adaptable soldier.	Potential effect on regimental ethos and unit cohesion, which in the Indian Army rest on long service and deep unit identification.
Creates a trained reserve in society and a disciplined, skilled pool for civilian employment.	Uncertainty for the 75 per cent not retained, and the prospect of a large annual cohort of trained but unemployed young people.
Permits periodic refreshment of the force profile in line with changing technological requirements.	Absence of pension, and initially inadequate death and disability benefits, for those who serve and are not retained.

THE LIVE POSITION IN 2026 — THIS IS THE EXAMINABLE MATERIAL The first Agniveer batch completes its four‑year term in October 2026, which has forced a review that is now the central force‑structure question before the Ministry of Defence. Higher retention is being sought by all three services. The Department of Military Affairs is examining proposals to raise retention well above the current 25 per cent — the Navy seeking about 75 per cent for technical specialists, and the Army and Air Force seeking about 50 per cent. The Navy’s argument is the strongest and most specific: in technical roles it can take three or more years to reach basic operational proficiency, so a four‑year term retaining a quarter of the batch leaves the service almost no return on its training investment. This is a capability argument, not a welfare argument, which is why it carries weight. Operation Sindoor (May 2025), in which Agniveers were deployed in active operational roles, is cited within the establishment as having demonstrated that longer field exposure and repeated operational deployment are necessary in high‑intensity conflict. Two welfare enhancements are proposed alongside: lifetime financial support for the families of Agniveers killed in action, and lifelong medical cover for service‑related disabilities — addressing the two most persistent criticisms of the scheme since 2022. No final decision has been taken. The Army’s stated position is that any change must be need‑based, justified by what the services actually require rather than by political pressure or public sentiment.

Why this belongs in an internal security paper. Force structure determines what the Army can sustain in prolonged counter‑insurgency deployment. Counter‑insurgency is the most relationship‑dependent form of military work — it rests on local knowledge, language familiarity, and trust built over years with a specific population, which is exactly what the Winning Hearts and Minds approach requires. A high‑turnover manpower model is structurally ill‑suited to that task, whatever its merits for conventional readiness or fiscal sustainability. If retention is raised substantially, this objection weakens considerably — which is why the October 2026 decision matters for this paper and not merely for defence policy.

Critical Assessment

What works. India has maintained, without serious interruption, the principle of civil supremacy over the military — a genuine achievement measured against the record of comparable post‑colonial states, and one that should be acknowledged before anything is criticised. The statutory ladder in the BNSS encodes that supremacy procedurally; the courts have enforced minimum force and denied blanket immunity; the armed forces have remained politically neutral; and the creation of the CDS and DMA has begun to address a coordination deficit identified two decades earlier.

What does not. Five defects:

• AFSPA departs from the aid‑to‑civil‑power doctrine rather than applying it. The BNSS scheme requires magisterial authorisation and reserves military initiative to cases where no magistrate can be reached; AFSPA permits a non‑commissioned officer to use lethal force on his own opinion in a notified area. Two incompatible standards operate simultaneously, and the second has been in force in some districts for decades.
• Prolonged internal deployment persists despite the disturbed‑area rollback, degrading conventional readiness and sustaining the civil–military boundary problem.
• The CDS lacks command authority. A post created to deliver integration cannot direct the services it is meant to integrate, which limits how far theatreisation can go without a further and politically harder decision.
• Theatreisation remains unapproved twenty‑five years after the tri‑service integration agenda was set, and its internal security implications have barely been examined.
• The coastal security architecture is inverted — strongest at the outer tier and weakest at the inner, where State marine police capacity remains well below sanction.

CURRENT STATUS (AS OF JULY 2026) Aid to civil power: governed by Sections 148 to 151 of the BNSS, 2023, in force since 1 July 2024, replacing Sections 129 to 132 of the CrPC. Theatre commands: the final theaterisation blueprint was submitted in April 2026 after extensive tri‑service consultation, and a joint commanders’ conference was held in May 2026. The plan envisages three theatres — Northern (China, Army‑led), Western (Pakistan, Air Force‑led) and Maritime (Navy‑led) — consolidating the existing 17 single‑service commands. A presentation to the Defence Minister was expected in July 2026; the plan awaits government approval. Meanwhile the services have begun operating on jointness principles through joint deployments and exercises. Agnipath: the first Agniveer batch completes its term in October 2026. Proposals to raise retention from 25 per cent to about 75 per cent (Navy, technical specialists) and about 50 per cent (Army and Air Force) are under examination by the Department of Military Affairs, alongside lifetime support for families of those killed in action and lifelong medical cover for service‑related disability. No final decision has been taken. Women in the armed forces: Permanent Commission across twelve arms and services in the Army; fighter pilot induction a permanent scheme since 2022; infantry and artillery open since 2023; 158 women cadets in the NDA as of early 2026; and in June 2026 the first nine women commissioned directly from the Indian Military Academy with Permanent Commission, without the Short Service Commission route. Coastal security: the three‑tier Navy–Coast Guard–marine police structure continues, with State coastal police capacity remaining the acknowledged weak link.

SECTION TAKEAWAY The armed forces enter internal security through a narrow statutory gateway — Sections 148 to 151 of the BNSS — built on a ladder of escalation in which the civil authority decides and the military executes. That doctrine is sound, judicially enforced, and among India’s real constitutional achievements. It also sits alongside AFSPA, which inverts every element of it, in districts where notifications have run for decades. Meanwhile the structural agenda — theatre commands twenty‑five years in gestation and still awaiting approval, a CDS without command authority, an Agnipath model whose first cohort exits in October 2026 — remains unresolved. The armed forces are not the problem in Indian internal security, and they are not the solution either. The measure of success is how rarely they are needed — which makes the capability of the State police the necessary sequel to this section.