Even before the dust begins to settle on her first-ever speech in the Lok Sabha, TMC MP Mahua Moitra made a fiery appeal in the lower house against the amendments to the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) on Wednesday. Warning that political targeting could be effected with the passage of the bill, Moitra said the amendments lacked clarity regarding the procedures to be followed while designating a person as a terrorist.
"This bill seeks to do two things—one to designate individuals as terrorists without due process. Two, it enables NIA to go into any state and arrest, sieze and search properties, without the knowledge of the state DGP. This is completely against the federal structure of our country because you are giving the NIA policing power. Even the CBI work with the state police," Moitra contended. "This bill is anti-federalism, anti-constitutional and anti-people."
"If they (the NDA government) want to get someone, they will get them somehow; on some law or lacunae or the other," she said.
"Opposition leaders, rights activists, minorities, anyone who doesn't seem to agree with the homogenous idea of India that the government thrusts upon us, is at risk," she said during the debate on UAPA Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha. "I have experienced this personally. Each time we bring in a cut motion, oppose a bill or move in an amendment, we run the risk of being labelled anti-national... Why are the opposition at the risk of being called anti-national every time we disagree with the government on issues of national security, law and order or policing? Its troll armies and propaganda machinery work overtime to call us terrorist sympathiser, 'sickulars' and anti-nationals," the TMC MP from West Bengal's Krishnanagar constituency said, even as members from the ruling party tried to interrupt her speech.
Moitra also reminded Home Minister Amit Shah that he was sitting in Sardar Vallabhai Patel's chair. "Patel was the unifier of India. He once said it is the prime responsibility of every citizen to feel that this country is free and to defend its freedom is its duty. It is not enough to build the world's tallest staue in Sardar Patel's honour; we must at least try to stand as tall as him," she added.
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Responding to the debate in the Lok Sabha, Home Minister Amit Shah defended the amendments to the anti-terror law, saying they were essential to keep law enforcement agencies one step ahead of terrorists. He asserted anti-terror laws would not be misused and used only to root out terrorism.
The Lok Sabha passed the amendments to the bill even as the Congress and the TMC boycotted the proceedings ahead of voting on the bill on Wednesday.
