The notification, issued by the Home Department and effective immediately, designates the administrative secretary (home) as the competent authority and represents a significant expansion of discretionary police power under India's principal counterterrorism law.
IMPHAL — The Manipur government has authorised police officers across the state to carry out arrests and searches without warrants under a provision of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, in a notification issued by the Home Department that takes effect immediately. The order invokes Section 43A of the UAPA and empowers officers not below the rank of head constable or havildar in both civil and armed police to act on suspicion of offenses under the law — a move officials say is aimed at strengthening the state's rapid response capability but which legal observers say may significantly narrow the procedural safeguards that ordinarily govern police action.
What the Order Says
The notification designates the administrative secretary (home) as the competent authority under the UAPA framework and extends operational powers to field-level enforcement officers. Under Section 43A, an officer so designated may arrest a person or enter and search premises without a warrant where they have "reason to believe" that an offense under the Act has been committed, is being committed, or is likely to be committed.
The provision is significant because it shifts the trigger for enforcement action from the judicial domain — where a magistrate would ordinarily issue a warrant based on sworn evidence — to the individual officer's assessment of a situation. The designated rank threshold, head constable or havildar, is relatively low within the police hierarchy, meaning the new authority covers a broad base of the state's uniformed personnel.
In concrete terms, the notification empowers officers to:
— Conduct searches of premises without prior judicial approval
— Make arrests without a warrant, on the basis of situational assessment
— Act on "reason to believe" rather than on the basis of an established offense
— Exercise these powers in relation to any offense under the UAPA
The UAPA: India's Primary Counterterrorism Law
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act is India's principal legislation for dealing with terrorism, separatist movements, and threats to national integrity. It grants law enforcement agencies significantly broader powers than those available under the Code of Criminal Procedure — including extended detention without bail, the ability to designate organisations as unlawful, and, under Section 43A, the warrantless enforcement powers now activated in Manipur.
The Act has been deployed extensively across India's conflict-affected regions, including in Jammu and Kashmir, parts of the Northeast, and in cases involving alleged Maoist or Naxalite activity. Critics of the law have long argued that its broad definitions and reduced procedural requirements create conditions for misuse, particularly against activists, journalists, and political opponents. Proponents argue that its provisions are necessary to allow security forces to act with the speed and decisiveness that conventional criminal law does not permit.
"Reason to believe" — a standard that now empowers action at field level, without prior judicial approval.
Broader Powers, Narrower Safeguards
The Manipur government's decision reflects a deliberate shift toward preventive policing — a model in which law enforcement acts before an offense is fully established, on the basis of intelligence or situational assessment rather than confirmed evidence. This approach prioritises disruption of potential threats over the documentation of completed acts, and has been a feature of counterterrorism policy in conflict zones across the world.
However, the trade-off is a reduction in the procedural safeguards that exist precisely to prevent the abuse of state power. The warrant requirement — now suspended for officers acting under the notification — serves as a check on arbitrary or retaliatory enforcement. When that requirement is removed, the burden shifts to post-hoc review mechanisms: documentation of the grounds for action, supervisory oversight, and, ultimately, the courts.
Legal observers contacted for comment said the change could lead to faster enforcement response in genuine security situations, but also increases the scope for discretionary — and potentially inconsistent — action by officers operating at the field level. They noted that the "reason to believe" standard, while legally defined, is inherently subjective when applied in real-time field conditions, and that the extension of the power to relatively junior ranks compounds that concern.
Context: Security Pressures in a State Under Strain
The notification comes as Manipur continues to navigate the aftermath of an ethnic conflict that erupted in May 2023 between the Meetei community of the valley and the Kuki-Zo communities of the hill districts, and which has, in 2026, shown signs of expanding to involve Naga communities in the state's eastern districts. The state has seen sustained militant activity, highway ambushes, civilian casualties, and repeated confrontations between protesters and security forces in recent weeks.
Officials have repeatedly cited the need for faster security response as a justification for enhanced enforcement powers. The UAPA notification fits within that framing, providing ground-level officers with a legal basis to act on threats without the delays that warrant applications — which require judicial consideration even on an emergency basis — can introduce.
Whether the expanded authority will translate into improved security outcomes or generate fresh tensions around civil liberties will depend, analysts say, on how the powers are exercised in practice. The documentation requirements built into UAPA enforcement — officers acting under Section 43A are required to report their actions to a senior officer — provide a paper trail, but meaningful accountability depends on whether supervisory review is genuinely applied.
What to Watch
The immediate practical impact of the notification is the removal of the warrant requirement for UAPA-related enforcement across the state. Going forward, civil society organisations, legal bodies, and the courts are likely to scrutinise how the powers are used — particularly whether arrests and searches conducted under the notification are adequately documented, whether detentions follow the procedural timelines required by law, and whether any legal challenges to actions taken under the expanded authority are mounted.
The Manipur High Court and, ultimately, the Supreme Court of India retain supervisory jurisdiction over UAPA enforcement, and past decisions from both courts have placed limits on how the law's provisions may be applied. The notification's legality is unlikely to be questioned — the government is acting within the framework the Act itself provides — but individual actions taken under it remain subject to judicial review.
The order marks one of the more significant expansions of police authority in Manipur in recent years. Its ultimate measure will be not the breadth of the powers it confers, but the rigour with which those powers are exercised, documented, and reviewed.
