NEW DELHI, May 4: India's military, upset by the government's growing dependence on the army to combat terrorism, has circulated a report criticizing other federal forces for failing to tackle domestic unrest on their own, reports AFP.

"We have been telling the government that the overuse of the army is bad for the morale of soldiers and affected training schedules,’’ a Defence Ministry spokesman said Tuesday of the army report prepared early last month.

The army accused federal paramilitary forces of 'fighting shy" of Sikh, Muslim and tribal rebels, adding that those troops were incompetent to deal with insurgencies in, Kashmir, Punjab and Assam.

"The continued deployment

of the army in internal security duties has a corrosive effect on its personnel and a decaying effect on police organization," the hard hitting report added.

India's million-plus army has deployed thousands of soldiers across India's north on "internal security" duties and troops have been kept on a near-permanent state of alert in states where Hindu -Muslim rioting erupts frequently.

Copies of the report, prepared by the army and the Defence Ministry, was handed over to the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force, the IndoTibetan* border police and other paramilitary organizations last week.

The central forces are not

geared to effectively deal with the terrorists, who are well trained, highly motivated and armed with highly destructive sophisticated weapons and explosives," the army said.

The paramilitary forces are shy of carrying out operations in the night and insurgents and terrorists are exploiting the weakness," the 15-page report said.

Obsolete weaponry and poor management of paramilitary forces and provincial police had led to growing dependence by the federal and state governments on the military for internal security duties, the report added.

The government's apprehension is based on their own perception that state police and the central forces are not capable of handling the situa-

tion themselves, even when the level of insurgency has been reasonably contained."

The report cited the example of Bombay, where the army was made to stay long after the Hindu-Muslim riots in December and January that left 1,000 people dead.

Frequent use of the army in Internal duties needs to be curbed, but It would be possible only If the central forces manage to handle such assignments on their own, " so far there is no evidence that this Is possible," the report Allans in Kashmir and Punjab prefer the army to paramilitary troops, whom they accuse of killing Innocent people in fake gunbattles, mass rapes and other atrocities In the name of anti-rebel operations.