If the sauce is good for the goose, it is good for the gander as well, isn’t it? Well, Congressmen and Congresswomen do not seem to have heard that old saying. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be making such a hue and cry over the extension of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act to the national capital. As the world knows, the Congress Party heads the ruling coalition in Maharashtra. And all this time while it shared power with Sharad Pawar’s nationalist Congress Party in the State it made no effort to strike MCOCA off the statue book. So the very law it deemed necessary to fight the menace of organized crime in Mumbai and other replaces in Maharashtra cannot be said to have acquired dangers implications upon its introduction in the national capital. But such is the partisanship of Congress leaders, and so poor their power of logic that when the Centre decide to issue an ordinance extending MCOCA to the Union Territory of Delhi, Congress leaders developed qualms of conscience. They flaunted their democratic instincts by the guardians of law and order in Delhi. This when the same law had been on the statue book in the Congress administered Maharashtra for a couple of years now. Whether it was plain hypocrisy or double standards it was hard to say, but clearly Congressmen were confused about their role in the face of a determined challenge posed to the security and integrity of the nation by the ISI trained terrorists.
Nowhere was this confusion more stark than in the case of anti-terror laws contemplated by the Centre. Thus you saw Shiela Dixit trying to do a great balancing act and in the process tying herself in knots in a television programme the other day while enunciating her party’s position over MCOCA’s extension to Delhi. No, she would not oppose MCOCA implementation in Delhi but, at the same time, she was worried over its misuse. A convenient argument which can be used to criticize all manner of discretionary powers in the hands of public servants, including those in the hands of Delhi Chief Minister Mrs. Dixit herself. If the fear of misuse of MCOCA did not deter the Congress led Government in Mumbai from putting it in the status book, one may wonder why the same fear should keep the Centre from implementing MCOCA in Delhi. What lies behind this hypocritical approach to MCOCA is the fact that the Shiela Dixit Government in Delhi is not directly in charge of law and order in the capital and therefore considers itself free to take a contrary view on the subject merely because it feels obliged to oppose all the BJP led Centre does, even if it is in the large interest of the people.
Indeed, the same insincerity and opportunism which informed the Congress Party’s position on the extension of MCOCA the national capital had earlier resulted in its bitter opposition to the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance. This when in some very important features, MCOCA was far more harsh than even POTO-I. For instance, the definition of a terrorist act is far more stretchable in MCOCA than under POTO. For, POTO does not take note of organized crime as such while MCOCA not only mentions that but, what is more, includes ‘promotion of insurgency’ as a terrorist act. Again, the onus to prove a person guilty under POTO lies on the prosecution while under the Maharashtra law a person is presumed guilty unless he is able to prove his innocence. The latter is a very harsh stipulation and makes MCOCA a far more stringent law than POTO. MCOCA does not stipulate prosecution of police officers found guilty of its misuse. But both POTO-I and II do. Under POTO police officer found guilty of malafide action could be jailed for up to two years but MCOCA offers no such protection. Given the fact that POTO was sponsored by the BJP led Government while MCOCA was the Congress NCP baby, it would be right and proper for the Delhi Chief Minister to direct her fears of the misuse of the latter to the Congress Party Chief Minister in Maharashtra.
Quite clearly, there is crying need
to fight the menace of terrorism unitedly. Partisanship of any sort in
dealing with the ISI sponsored terror attacks in India should be abandoned
forthwith. As for the opposition Congress Party’s concern for human rights
and civil liberties it would be enough to remind it of its records in the
years it was in power at the center. From the draconian Emergency, when
the country’s Constitution was stood on its head, to the enactment of preventive
detention laws such as TADA, the Congress Party has behaved so shoddily
that its concerns for civil liberties sound thoroughly hollow and ludicrous.
As the main opposition party it should bear in mind that the security situation
has worsened, and not improved, from the time it had felt impelled to enact
MISA and TADA. Today terrorism has reached the heart of India in New Delhi’s
Parliament House. And to suggest that preventive detention laws without
any safeguards whatsoever against their misuse were required in those relatively
peaceful times in the Seventies and Eighties but are not required now,
even with safeguards against their misuse, is to betray a sickening streak
of partisanship. To the extent it detracts from presenting a united front
against terrorist, the Congress Party’s myopic stand on POTO and MCOCA
in Delhi represents a greater threat to national unity than even the threat
of the ISI sponsored terror.