{"id":51968,"date":"2019-09-07T14:33:24","date_gmt":"2019-09-07T09:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogadmin.forumias.com\/?page_id=51968"},"modified":"2019-09-07T14:33:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-07T09:03:32","slug":"answered-critically-analyse-the-unlawful-activities-prevention-act-2019-do-you-think-it-is-a-threat-to-fundamental-freedoms-enshrined-in-indian-constitution","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/answered-critically-analyse-the-unlawful-activities-prevention-act-2019-do-you-think-it-is-a-threat-to-fundamental-freedoms-enshrined-in-indian-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"[Answered] Critically analyse the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2019. Do you think it is a threat to fundamental freedoms enshrined in Indian Constitution?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<table class=\"wp-block-table\"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Demand of the question<\/strong> <br><strong>Introduction.<\/strong> Contextual Introduction. <br><strong>Body. <\/strong>Key features and significance of the act. How it is threat to fundamental freedoms of individuals? <br><strong>Conclusion. <\/strong>Way forward. <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n\n\n\n<p>The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2019 amends the Unlawful Activities Act, 1967, providing special procedures to deal with terrorist activities, individuals and groups that foster terrorism in India. It empowers the government to designate individuals as terrorists if the person commits or participates in acts of terrorism, prepares for terrorism, promotes terrorism or is otherwise involved in terrorism. This has been done to stop the spread terrorism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Key features of the Unlawful\nActivities (Prevention) Amendment Act:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Under the Act, the central government may designate an organisation or an individual as a terrorist if it:<ul><li>Commits or participates in acts of terrorism.<\/li><li>Prepares for terrorism.<\/li><li>Promotes terrorism.<\/li><li>Is otherwise involved in terrorism.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>The act empowers the Director-General, National Investigation Agency (NIA) to grant approval of seizure or attachment of property when the case is being investigated by the agency.<\/li><li>Under the existing Act, the investigating officer is required to obtain the prior approval of the Director General of Police (DGP) to seize properties that bear any connection to terrorism.<\/li><li>It empowers the officers of the NIA of the rank of Inspector or above, to investigate cases.<\/li><li>The existing Act provides for investigation of cases to be conducted by officers of the rank of Deputy Superintendent or Assistant Commissioner of Police or above.<\/li><li>The International Convention for Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (2005) has been added in the act through the Amendment.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Significance of the amendment:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>This law is aimed at effective\nprevention of unlawful activities associations in India.<\/li><li>Its main objective is to make powers\navailable for dealing with activities directed against the integrity and\nsovereignty of India.<\/li><li>The Act makes it a crime to support\nany secessionist movement or to support claims by a foreign power to what India\nclaims as its territory.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How amendment act is a threat to\nfundamental freedoms in the constitution?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>UAPA amendment act is against the\nbasic fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of India. It is against\nArticles 14, 19 and 21, representing the Right to Equality, Freedom of Speech\nand Expressions, and Right to Life, respectively.<\/li><li>This is a potentially dangerous\namendment which will empower officials of Union Ministry to brand any person \u2018a\nterrorist\u2018, without following due process.<\/li><li>The Act introduces a vague\ndefinition of terrorism to encompass a wide range of non-violent political\nactivity, including political protest thus against Fundamental right of freedom\nof speech and expression in Article 19.<\/li><li>An official designation as a\nterrorist will be akin to \u2018civil death\u2019 for a person, with social boycott,\nexpulsion from job, hounding by media, and perhaps attack from self-proclaimed\nvigilante groups following.<\/li><li>It empowers the government to\ndeclare an organisation as \u2018terrorist\u2019 and ban it. Mere membership of such an\norganisation itself becomes a criminal offence. This violate fundamental rights\nof an innocent.<\/li><li>The only statutory remedy available\nto such a person is to make an application before the Central Government for\nde-notification, which will be considered by a Review Committee constituted by\nthe Government itself.<\/li><li>It allows detention without a charge\nsheet for up to 180 days and police custody can be up to 30 days.<\/li><li>It creates a strong presumption\nagainst bail and anticipatory bail is out of the question. It creates a\npresumption of guilt for terrorism offences merely based on the evidence\nallegedly seized.<\/li><li>It authorises the creation of\nspecial courts, with wide discretion to hold in-camera proceedings (closed-door\nhearings) and use secret witnesses but contains no sunset clause and provisions\nfor mandatory periodic review.<\/li><li>The law could be used to target\nminorities or a section of people like authors, academics, lawyers thereby\naffecting their rights.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus the amendment act is dangerous in the sense that it provide unchecked powers to government to designate anyone as a terrorist with less chance to the individual to prove his\/her innocence. Further amendment has many loopholes that need to be plugged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Demand of the question Introduction. Contextual Introduction. Body. Key features and significance of the act. How it is threat to fundamental freedoms of individuals? Conclusion. Way forward. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2019 amends the Unlawful Activities Act, 1967, providing special procedures to deal with terrorist activities, individuals and groups that foster terrorism in&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/answered-critically-analyse-the-unlawful-activities-prevention-act-2019-do-you-think-it-is-a-threat-to-fundamental-freedoms-enshrined-in-indian-constitution\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">[Answered] Critically analyse the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2019. Do you think it is a threat to fundamental freedoms enshrined in Indian Constitution?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":49132,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-51968","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/51968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}