BJP leaders slam Cong. for opposing POTO

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, NOV. 18. The Congress came in for a sharp attack by BJP leaders on Sunday for opposing the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) in spite of losing leaders like Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi to terrorism.

Addressing a public meeting to observe anti-terrorism day, they told the AICC spokesman, Mr. S. Jaipal Reddy, and the party MP, Mr. Kapil Sibal, that the Congress leaders themselves suggested enactment of a more effective law when the TADA was allowed to lapse.

POTO was a result of three-year-long efforts to amend the Cr. PC to ensure that terrorists did not go scot free by exploiting loopholes in the law.

The Union Minister of State for Home, Mr. Ch. Vidyasagar Rao, said the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutional validity of TADA in more than one case. It had even observed that the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case could be punished only because of TADA under which a confessional statement made before a police officer was admissible. POTO, he said, had several safeguards against misuse unlike TADA.

Mr. Rao said that as many as 61,013 people had died in Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East at the hands of terrorists and insurgents, whereas India lost only 5,468 soldiers in wars that it fought after independence. Challenging the Congress claim that POTO would put fetters on press freedom, he said journalists were free to pursue their profession but were only bound to provide to the authorities any information regarding possible terrorist violence.

The Union Minister of State for Urban Development, Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya, said terrorism had become a subject of international debate only after the September 11 attack in the US but India had been facing the problem since two decades in Punjab, J&K and the North-East. He said that it was no ordinary matter that the Laskhar-e-Taiba had threatened to kill the Prime Minister and the Home Minister.

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Section  : Southern States
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