Wednesday, Oct 22, 2003
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By J. Venkatesan
Briefing reporters on the Cabinet decision, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, said the ordinance giving statutory powers to the review committees would be promulgated by the President and a Bill to replace it introduced in the winter session of Parliament. The recommendations of the Centrally-appointed review committee set up in April this year is only advisory in nature at present and not binding on the enforcement authorities even if there is a finding that the law has been abused in a particular case. States such as Tamil Nadu have also set up State-level review committees to go into complaints of POTA cases and their role is also advisory and recommendatory in nature. Under the proposed ordinance, if the Central review committee comes to the conclusion that POTA has been misused or abused in a particular case or cases, it could direct the release of the victims and the decision will be communicated to the States concerned immediately. Such a decision will also be final and binding on the special POTA courts dealing with these cases. The Centre's move to provide teeth and strengthen the Central review committee follows persistent demands by the MDMK (Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and other constituents of the ruling National Democratic Alliance to confer more powers on the committee which is now going into various cases, including the one against the MDMK leader, Vaiko. He has been detained under POTA since July 2002. Over 40 persons have been detained in Tamil Nadu under POTA, including P. Nedumaran and R.R. Gopal, Editor of the Tamil bi-weekly Nakkeeran. Preventing POTA misuse Ms. Swaraj said the Centre's view was that the law was intended only to effectively tackle terrorism. However, as several complaints of "misuse" of POTA in various States had come to its notice, it was decided to provide for an individual redress mechanism in the Act by conferring more powers on the review committees. Under the ordinance, a provision will be incorporated in POTA that the decision of the Central review committee on complaints scrutinised by it is binding on the Centre, the States concerned and the investigation officials. Similarly, the State committees' decision is binding on the State Governments concerned. And if there are conflicting decisions between the Central and State committees with regard to the same complaints, the Central committee's decision will prevail. No time limit is proposed under the ordinance for the disposal of complaints by the review committees. Law Ministry sources told The Hindu that the overriding provision would not impinge on the rights of the States. Being a law under the `Union List' of the Constitution, the Centre was empowered to make such a provision by way of safeguards against misuse of POTA. The Cabinet decision comes at a time when the DMK, one of the constituents of the NDA, has announced an agitation programme on December 1 seeking repeal of POTA. The decision is also a sequel to a delegation of MPs meeting the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to bring in amendments to POTA to prevent its "misuse". Several political parties have also requested the Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, to incorporate sufficient safeguards so that POTA is not used as a "vendetta" against politicians. Reacting to the Cabinet decision, Justice Arun B. Saharya, who heads the three-member Central review committee which is already reviewing the POTA cases across the country, told The Hindu: "At present, our work is not handicapped due to lack of powers but only due to lack of basic facilities to do our job." While welcoming the ordinance, he said he would like to study the ordinance before giving his comments. The Central committee, while giving its findings on the complaints, was to make a comprehensive review of the use of POTA so far in various States and give suggestions for removing shortcomings, if any, in the implementation of the Act.
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