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Saturday, Jul 24, 2004

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National

POTA panel demands more powers

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI, JULY 23. The Central POTA Review Committee today urged the Centre to vest more powers with the panel by making suitable amendments to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). It said that its review would be a futile and meaningless exercise otherwise.

In its second interim report submitted to the Union Home Ministry, the committee said that in spite of serious handicaps, it had been able to make substantial progress in reviewing the cases before it. But the lack of statutory powers to secure information and material from the quarters concerned had hampered its work.

The committee drew the Government's attention to its first interim report submitted on December 4, 2003 recommending that it be vested with powers similar to the National Human Rights Commission to seek information from the State Governments. Inaction on the recommendations had caused a major setback in the functioning of the review committee.

Centre's inaction

The Government had merely replied in February that the recommendations would be considered at the time of extension of POTA beyond October 23, 2004. "Omission on the part of the Central Government in taking any meaningful action on the interim report only hampered the work of the review committee. It was only disabling the committee from effectively carrying out its statutory function."

The report said: "Efforts to expeditiously dispose of the remaining complaints may not fructify and, as a result, the remedy of review might become futile, unless suitable provision is made for production of information and material necessary for proper review of cases under POTA."

In its conclusions, the committee said: "The experience thus far has brought to the fore a number of issues concerning various provisions of the statute depicting proneness to misuse. A number of these are subject matter of the suggestions received from various NGOs, Bar Associations, political parties and members of the public. These suggestions would also be taken up for consideration, after disposal of pending complaints, in respect of cases where accused persons are in jail." The report however failed to indicate how many complaints the committee had disposed of since its inception.

Ban on LTTE

The committee declined to take up for review the ban imposed on two terrorist organisations — the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Akhil Bharat Nepali Ekta Samaj — on the ground that a lot of time would be required to be devoted exclusively for these two matters at the cost of other work on complaints involving questions of personal liberty. It has, therefore, suggested that the Government set up another committee to review the ban.

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