The Hindu : SC to hear petitions challenging POTA on March 25

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 22, 2003

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SC to hear petitions challenging POTA on March 25

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI March 21. Even as the Centre has set up a review committee to check the misuse of the provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), the Supreme Court will take up for final hearing on March 25 three petitions challenging its constitutional validity, including the one filed by the MDMK leader, Vaiko.

Mr. Vaiko had questioned the validity of Section 21 of the POTA under which he was arrested on July 11 last and is still in judicial custody. The People's Union for Civil Liberties and the All India Human Rights and Social Justice Front are the other petitioners.

During the last hearing on January 13, the court had granted time to the Centre and Tamil Nadu government to file a reply to Mr. Vaiko's petition and the replies are expected to be filed on March 24. Mr. Vaiko had assailed Section 21 stating that its scope was very wide, affecting the right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution.

He contended that as a leader of a political party he had only explained that at a time when peace talks were going on in Sri Lanka with the LTTE, the Centre should reconsider its stand on the ban imposed on the LTTE. However, he was arrested invoking Sec. 21 of the POTA, which required deeper interpretation.

The other two petitioners submitted that the Government had not taken a lesson from the past experience of the TADA being misused. It was on record that out of 76,000 arrests made under the TADA, the conviction rate was just 0.41 per cent.

Centre justifies POTA

In its response to the PUCL petition, the Centre justified the enactment of POTA stating that there was a general consensus that an anti-terrorism law was very much required when terrorism had spread its tentacles across the world by using hi-tech weapons. The global opinion on enacting special laws to tackle terrorism was clearly demonstrated in the ``post-September 11 (2001)'' scenario.

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