NEW DELHI: In their campaign against the improper implementation and misuse of TADA in the. Country, last week leading personalities condemned the Central government for its failure to repeal the draconian law.
Participating the lunch of “Mukti” (liberation), a platform to fight for common man’s cause, here the personalities said the Act had failed in checking terrorism and was repressive against the common man, hence it must go immediately.
Speaking on the occasion MPs, including Janeshwar Misra, Raj Babbar, Rashid Masood, Ish Dutt Yadav, Mim Afzal, Uday Pratap Singh and several others said that innocent people including women, aged ones and children had been booked under the Act in many states in the name of law and order. They demanded immediate release of those detained under the Act. They said that “it was used as a weapon by the governments’ to silence the just voice of the people.” Explaining the objectives of “Mukti,” its convener, Raj Babbar, MP, said it was a forum for those who want to fight the corrupt system and end inequality.
The well-known journalists Kuldip Nayar, Shahid Siddiqui, and jurist, Justice (retd) Rajender Sachar, said that the country should be liberated not only from the black law but also from poverty, misery, inequality, injustice and communalism to achieve a just order.
Sachar regretted that his efforts to seek favorable verdict against the Act failed when the five judge Supreme Court Bench turned down his plea, “It would have been good if the law was repealed as it was violative of all human rights conventions the country had signed in the past,” he said Professor Amrik Singh, former vice chancellor of Punjabi University, Muchkund Dubey, former foreign secretary, well-known scientists Prof A. Rehman, Dr. Suman ‘Sahai, film personality Tapan Bose and the artist Habin Tanvir expressed their similar concerns and emphasized the need for a peoples’ movement against the Act.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 23, 1994
