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Anti-terrorism ordinance : Govt finds the going tough

	November 05, 2001

The Prime Minister called a meeting of opposition party leaders to tell them the reasons for the Government going for an anti-terrorism ordinance but the Government found the attack on the POTO unsettling and it had to backtrack with a plea that it would review some of the offensive clauses in the ordinance. The meeting was also meant to gauge the reaction to the Indian stand that no talks with Musharraf could be held at the moment during the Vajpayee visit to New York. There were hints from some opposition parties that Musharraf should not be allowed to win the PR exercise by his claim that he was ready for a dialogue but it was New Delhi which was rejecting it. For the present, however, there is no change in New Delhi’s stand that a dialogue would serve no purpose without the ending of cross-border terrorism.

The Opposition parties launched a no-holds-barred attack on the Government over the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) at the meeting. But their stand on talks with Pakistan emerged only after the meeting in carefully worded statements to the Press, as the Congress and the CPM played the Opposition role safely. They sought neither to deviate from their stated positions and suffixed their party line with an escape clause. After the meeting, Sonia Gandhi told reporters that the Congress had always been for a dialogue with Pakistan. “We don’t believe that that door should be closed. But any dialogue should ensure that national interest is protected.”

Similarly, the CPM’s Somnath Chatterjee said he believed a meeting with Musharraf should take place but didn’t specify whether it should take place in New York. Vajpayee and Musharraf will be in New York at the same time. Vajpayee is addressing the UNGA on November 10, the Pakistani leader the following day. Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and Raghuvansh Prasad Singh of the RJD, sources said, cautioned the Prime Minister not to succumb to pressure as far as meeting Musharraf was concerned.

Briefing the media, Parliamentay Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan said no one had raised the issue of the PM meeting Musharraf in the US. With the Prime Minister having ruled this out, the Government is concluding that consensus has been reached. The Prime Minister had called the all-party meeting so that he could go on his journey to Russia, Britain and the USA armed with “democratic consensus”, though the official reason was to apprise the Opposition of meetings the Government has had with the foreign leaders who visited India in the recent weeks. The PM also spoke of the letters he had despatched to a dozen world leaders setting forth India’s position that the Taliban should not be part of a post-war government in Kabul.

Also looming over the meeting was the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. And so realising that there was no major difference of approach with the Government on foreign policy, Opposition leaders attacked the POTO, their positions determined by their political constituencies. The ordinance, they said, had created a fear in the minorities that it would be used against them. Though Sonia Gandhi didn’t say much on POTO at the meeting, she later dubbed it a “draconian” measure. Mulayam Singh Yadav also took a critical stand, saying the ordinance did not provide recourse to law as a safeguard. Yadav said the POTO was the most dangerous law ever to be promulgated in India — more draconian than any other previous law like the Maintenance of Internal Security Act or the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act. He said that when the British could rule India with the help of just the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, sending freedom fighters to the gallows on charges of anti-national activity, there was no need for such a draconian law as the POTO. Yadav said it would ultimately be used more to keep the government in power and suppress the opposition than to fight terrorism

And he took swipes at the Congress which, he said, had enacted such laws in the past. The Left parties also expressed their strong reservations about the legal measure being taken by the Government to nab terrorists.

The Vajpayee Government’s hopes of converting the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) into law in the coming winter session of Parliament are receding by the day. Major Opposition parties have already declared their resolve to vote out the proposed Bill in Parliament, but what should worry the Government more is that support to the ordinance in its present form from within the ruling NDA is far from enthusiastic. The DMK may have been the only major constituent of the NDA to have categorically rejected the ordinance so far, but other coalition partners are also voicing their concerns about its “draconian” provisions.

While support for an exclusive anti-terrorism law is near unanimous, some of BJP’s allies too are veering to the view that some of the provisions in the ordinance could lend themselves to be abused. These parties are not willing to reject the POTO outright, like the DMK, but are making it clear that the concerns of the critics need to be addressed by the Government. Commented Janata Dal (United) spokesman Mohan Prakash: “We support the POTO in principle because there is need for a tough law against terrorism in the present global context. But if it is felt some amendments are required, they can be incorporated.”

Similarly, the Telugu Desam Party, the Vajpayee Government’s chief prop, says that it will make its own suggestions when the Bill to replace the POTO comes up for consideration in Parliament. “We support the ordinance. But if we feel there are any lacunae in it, we will say it in Parliament,” asserted K. Yerran Naidu, leader of the Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party. He said “the party will make its stand clear if there are any provisions which are against public interest or violate fundamental rights.”

It was left to Rural Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu to defend the POTO. He claimed that the ordinance was a special law for a special situation. He argued that it was wrong to say that the POTO targeted the minorities, and that a section of the media and some individuals were creating needless fears among people. He said terrorists had no religion. “If you are involved in terrorism, you cannot take the cover of religion.” A terrorist is neither a man nor a woman, neither a Hindu nor a Sikh nor a Muslim. A terrorist is just a terrorist and there is nothing in the POTO that is against anyone other than terrorists, he pointed out.

When asked why the POTO was needed in Gujarat, Kerala or Madhya Pradesh or other States where there was no terrorism, he said terrorism loomed over the whole nation after September 11. The IPC (Indian Penal Code) was there to take care of ordinary people. “But terrorists are not ordinary people and such a drastic measure is needed to prevent them from harming people.”

According to Naidu, the controversy was the making of a few who did not think of the nation’s interests. The BJP is trying to take a leaf out of President Bush’s speech in which he said those who were not with the US would be considered as supporting the terrorists.



CPI-M shoots down ordinance in West Bengal

After being rapped on its knuckles by the CPI(M) High Command, the Left Front Government in West Bengal seems to have changed its mind on the State Prevention of Organised Crime Ordinance. The Government has abandoned the plan to promulgate the ordinance. The prospect of facing the winter session of Parliament, where the Left parties are expected to “vehemently” oppose the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO), seems to have led to the change of heart in the CPI(M) camp.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya was also hauled up by his own Front members for trying to bring in a serious policy decision without prior discussion with allies. The party Politburo seemed eager to wash its hands off the ordinance. Describing it as a non-existent issue, senior member Prakash Karat said: “West Bengal has different problems. But the Chief Minister (Buddhadev Bhattacharya) informed us, they will not bring any ordinance”.

A Bill will be brought up in the West Bengal Assembly which will not have the debatable issues of the POTO. The legislation had been discussed only in the State Cabinet. Bhattacharya, who came to Delhi to attend the two-day CPI-M Central Committee meeting, had a lot of explaining to do. And sources in the party said the Chief Minister has passed the buck to the bureaucracy. Apparently, the proposal of the ordinance which the Left Front Cabinet had “discussed” came from a senior bureaucrat who had picked up the idea in Delhi and thrust it into the Cabinet’s agenda.

Party sources said that when the ordinance proposal reached the CPI(M) State Secretariat - which has Jyoti Basu, Anil Biswas, Biman Bose as also Bhattacharya as members - it was “nipped in the bud”. Such an ordinance before the winter session of Parliament, where the party was planning to criticise the Vajpayee Government for promulgating the POTO, would have been suicidal.