The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Divergent views on imposition of punitive tax

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 09, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Divergent views on imposition of punitive tax

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, SEPT. 8. Imposition of punitive tax is a measure rarely invoked by the State police for the maintenance of law and order. A provision in the Revenue Recovery Act empowers the Government to impose `punitive' tax on groups of persons frequently indulging in violence and creating disturbances.

"I don't remember imposing punitive tax anywhere in the State in recent past," the DGP, S.R. Sukumara, told The Hindu on Wednesday. He recalled that the provision was invoked when he had worked in Rayalaseema as SP

The police used to identify villages witnessing a series of lawless activities and post an armed picket there. The punitive tax was roughly equal to the expenditure borne by the Government in maintaining the police outpost, including the travel allowance and dearness allowance of the police personnel deployed there.

The amount thus calculated would be imposed on persons of both groups resorting to violence.

The noted civil liberties activist, K.G. Kannabhiran, said the imposition of punitive tax was not constitutionally valid. If the Government had the will to control factional violence, it should clearly define factionalism as an act of organised crime so it could be tried under the provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Act (APCOCA). The method of imposing punitive tax had fallen into disuse for three decades. Efforts to revive it were totally undemocratic, he remarked.

The Convenor of the Human Rights Forum (HRF), Balagopal, said it revival of the tax would be good as long as it was confined to "only those indulging in violence" and not invoked against all the villagers, as was done during the British rule.

`Parties hypocritical'

"Even if the tax is not imposed, villagers bear the expenditure for food for the police picket of their area," he said, adding that both the Congress and Telugu Desam parties were being hypocritical on the issue of factionalism.

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