Tuesday, June 23, 2009

CPI (Maoist) included in list of terrorist organizations to avoid any ambiguity

The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1908 enables the State Government under Section 16 of that Act to declare an association to be ‘unlawful’. That declaration can be made if the State Government is of the opinion that the association interferes with the administration of the law or with the maintenance of law and order or constitutes a danger to the public peace. 

Acting under Section 16 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1908, Orissa, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu have declared CPI (Maoist) as an unlawful association. Bihar has declared the MCC and the CPI (ML)-PW as unlawful associations. 

Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have declared CPI (Maoist) as an unlawful association under their own State Acts. 

So far as the Central Government is concerned, powers are vested in it under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 as amended. The last amendment was made by Act 35 of 2008 which came into force on 31.12.2008. 

UA(P)A enables the Central Government to declare an association as unlawful (Section 3). It also contains a definition of ‘terrorist organization’ in Section 2(1)(m) and the terrorist organizations are listed in the Schedule to the Act. In the original Act, 32 organizations were included in the Schedule. Sl.Nos. 24 and 25 read as under: 

24: Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) – People’s War, All its Formations and Front Organisations. 

25: Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), All Its Formations and Front Organisations 

In September 2004, CPI(ML) and MCC announced their decision to merge and named the new organization as CPI (Maoist). There was some opposition to the merger and some elements in the two organizations continued to function independently. After some months, the situation crystallized, and the merger appears to have been accepted broadly, even though there are still some groups in some States which continue to have differences over the issue. 

By virtue of Section 41 of the UA(P) Act, the merged organization, CPI (Maoist), would also be a terrorist organization. 

Nevertheless, in order to avoid any ambiguity, the Central Government has, in exercise of powers under Section 35 (1) (a), added CPI (Maoist) to the Schedule to the Act. As stated already, the Schedule contains the list of terrorist organizations.

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