By Vikram Kilpady
The Union government’s decision to henceforth observe the dreaded midnight knock of the Emergency with the June 25 Samvidhan Hatya Divas has met with sufficient scorn from the Opposition, read the Congress, as well as with disbelief from the people. But within that same week, another move, this time by the Maharashtra government, has raised the hackles of lawyers, activists and opposition parties alike.
The Eknath Shinde government tabled the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, 2024, recently with the purpose of curbing Naxalism. But the legislation, in fact, goes beyond just that. It specifies that Naxalism and the menace it poses have increased in urban areas through city-based Naxal front outfits, which it seeks to control by jailing people who may not even be members of the proscribed groups.
The Bill introduced by state industries minister Uday Samant notes the proliferation of Urban Naxalism. That should ring a bell since any critic of the Narendra Modi government has been routinely dismissed over the last 10 years as an urban naxal and lampooned publically through TV news talk shows and such films as The Kashmir Files. First, it was the students and teachers of the Jawaharlal Nehru University who were dismissed and derided for their support to left-wing causes. Then, anyone who dared to question any untoward action or policy of the Centre found themselves bracketed within these two cozy words. Then, matters would move a little further into “anti-national” and “gaddar” territory and other such attributions of sedition.
Under the Maharashtra Bill, it is proposed that any individual who solicits or receives or contributes any donation in cash or kind to help the groups can be jailed. Of course, anyone even helping or canvassing to promote a meeting of such groups will also be put in jail. Most laws allow the arrest of individuals who let members of the underground cadre stay at their homes, so this one’s not that far from the pre-established lot.
With the government empowered to decree an organisation unlawful, the fig leaf of an advisory board, appointed by the same government, to review the decision has also been proposed.
The definition of unlawful activity in the Bill is open and can be interpreted in whatever ways the state chooses. An unlawful activity is classified as that constituting a danger or menace to public order, peace and tranquility. One man’s menace can be another man’s cause in the constitutional sense as well. But let’s let it be for now.
Under the now prevalent law, anything deemed unlawful has to challenge, indeed obstruct or interfere with, the maintenance of public order, law and its administration or its institutions and personnel. Further, any person or action that shows criminal force used against any public servant will also be held unlawful, acts such as resisting arrest perhaps?
Mass political actions such as disrupting communications by rail, road or water are now held to be unlawful, thus ruling out any road or rail rook agitation, previously deemed a valid means of protest and often used by the party now in power when it sat in the opposition. Activists and lawyers are aghast at the clause which mentions encouraging or preaching disobedience to established law and its institutions, thus lumping all opposition activity against the ruling government into a guerilla war.
To top it all, all the offences under the proposed legislation will be cognisable and non-bailable, and would be investigated by sub-inspectors or officers ranked senior.
The Bill proposes three years’ jail and a fine of upto Rs three lakh for anyone who takes part in or contributes to or seeks support for meetings of an unlawful organisation. Similarly, if a non-member of the unlawful organisation does the same or provides shelter to the outfit’s members, they can be jailed for up to two years and fined up to Rs two lakh.
Members of such organisations that commit or abet or attempt to commit any unlawful activity can be imprisoned for a term up to seven years and also be liable to pay Rs five lakh penalty.
The advisory board, the Bill says, will have three persons who are either qualified to be High Court judges or who have been and have retired in such capacity. The government will have to refer the declaration of an organisation as unlawful to the board within six weeks of such decision. The board then has three months to come up with a report made after studying the evidence against the outfit. Since the offences are non-bailable, the courts can take a break since bail isn’t going to happen automatically, as it used to.
The government will revoke the notification declaring an outfit unlawful if the board doesn’t find sufficient cause.
Further, once an organisation is declared unlawful, the commissioner of police or the district magistrate have been empowered by the Bill to take possession of its offices or the homes of key members and seize moveable property, including money, securities, computers or other assets. Further, the seized moveable property would be forfeited to the government if the investigation reveals the outfit was indeed unlawful and was using those resources.
The legal recourse for the organisation declared unlawful would only be available for redress post-facto via a revision petition to the High Court, the Bill says.
Explaining the rationale for such legislation, the Bill says existing laws have not been effective or adequate to tackle Naxalism. It notes directions from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs that advised enacting legislation by states suffering Naxal violence to tackle such unlawful activities.
It says Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha have passed Public Security Acts to curb such organisations and had banned 48 frontal outfits. The Bill says like organisations were active in Maharashtra and needed a similar prohibitory law. While it is true that these states have passed such laws, they have not advocated jailing non-members for the myriad offences mentioned in the proposed Maharashtra law.
As noted in other opinion pieces, several activists have been in jail without bail for the Bhima Koregaon/ Elgar Parishad case since 2018. The police and other agencies have been at pains to blame the Naxals for choreographing the accused group’s meetings and the subsequent violence. Father Stan Swamy died in prison for advocating tribal rights. Others have been lucky and are out on bail after moving the higher courts. Erstwhile professor GN Saibaba, who is paralysed from the waist down, was released from Nagpur central jail after 10 years’ incarceration for his prosecution-alleged, court-dismissed links to the Maoists, earlier referred to as Naxals.
Gadchiroli and its surrounding regions have been strongholds of Maoists in Maharashtra, but the Bill instead turns its eye and ire to the urban areas from where, it says, most of the supporters spring. It notes the presence and spread of Naxal frontal organisations in urban areas of the state, which, the Bill conjectures, have been sustaining underground Naxal groups with logistics and safe refuge to their armed cadres.
The proposed Bill still sees them as a challenge that is creating unrest among the masses to propagate their ideology of armed rebellion in the age of sops through direct benefit transfer.
Maharashtra is rife with organisations which have at one time or another been influenced by Marx and Lenin, though not necessarily by Mao in large numbers. These include groups that aim for the welfare and progress of marginalised sections of society, including Dalits and Adivasis. While they may not all be on the same page any more, due to changes in grassroots politics with parties being split down the middle, the state has been a hive of activism.
The farmers’ protest in 2020, along with a massive march through Mumbai against the now-withdrawn farm laws, was led by the CPI(M)-affiliated Kisan Sabha in Maharashtra. Though the CPI(M), the CPI and the CPI (Marxist Leninist-Liberation) are now in the mainstream, their cadres are still rooted in left-wing causes.
Mumbai, formerly Bombay, was a key trade union centre with most of the Communist-led support now having gravitated to the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh of the RSS. Anyone sympathetic to the cause of the toiling working class, which is already under severe duress of job losses and lack of sufficient opportunity, would be fair game to be picked up as an urban naxal. The proposed law allows such wide interpretations.
The rump of the Maoist cadres are hiding in the forests of Dandakaranya, emerging once in a while to kill security personnel or dying in frequent mass encounters.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had declared left-wing extremism as the greatest challenge of India after its liberalisation in the 1990s. One of his ministers even wanted to use Army helicopters to give hot pursuit to armed extremist cadres. The media called the action Operation Green Hunt, but the choppers didn’t come through.
With the Maharashtra Bill, everyone needs to be on best terms with their neighbours and be on guard against extreme emotions. What if a quarrel over parking rights ends up with one being accused of Naxalism?
Thankfully, the Maharashtra Assembly is yet to pass the law, but given the speed with which draconian laws get the thumbs-up, this looks already like a fait accompli. But will protest against such a law also be deemed an unlawful activity? We will have to wait till the Maharashtra Assembly convenes again.