The Hindu : Review committee to check misuse of POTA

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 14, 2003

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Review committee to check misuse of POTA

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 13. Bowing to the pressure from political parties on the misuse of the anti-terrorist law, POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act), the Centre today announced the setting up of a review committee to check misuse of its provisions.

The committee, headed by Arun Saharya, former Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court, will take a comprehensive view of the use of the legislation in various States and give its findings and suggestions for removing shortcomings in the implementation of POTA.

The announcement was made by the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, in a suo motu statement in the Lok Sabha today. Other members of the committee would soon be named and its terms and conditions would be worked out separately. While looking at the shortcomings in POTA implementation, Mr. Advani said the review committee would lay special emphasis on ensuring that the provisions of POTA were invoked for combating terrorism and "are not used against ordinary criminals or those who are not terrorists or whose acts cannot be considered as terrorist acts.

"Members have raised from time to time an issue that the provisions of this law are invoked even against such persons and acts which do not fall into the ambit of this law. The Government has given careful consideration to their views and it has been decided that the matter is serious enough to warrant the invoking of the powers of the Central Government under Section 60 of Act which provides for the formation of one or more Review Committees,'' Mr. Advani told the Lok Sabha. The slapping of POTA against the MDMK leader, Vaiko, the TNLA leader, P. Nedumaran, the independent U.P. MLA, Raja Bhaiyya, and his father have made several political parties see red in the manner in which the law was invoked and demands have been made from time to time for dropping POTA provisions against them. Mr. Advani said that POTA was a special law to deal with terrorist acts.

''However, in order to ensure that these powers are not misused and the violation of human rights does not take place, specific safeguards have been built into the Act.'' Mr. Advani said that it became necessary to put in place such a special law last year due to increased instances of cross-border terrorism and the continued offensive agenda of the ISI aimed at destabilising India, and the post-September 11 developments.

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