ARUNACHAL PRADESH'S UAPA

With this, 41 detainees have been released, including a minor. 40 were booked under APUAPA

2. About APUAPA

• The APUAPA was notified in 2014 “to provide for more effective prevention of certain unlawful activities of individuals and associations.”
• It enables the state government or any official not below the rank of a Secretary to the State Government or a District Magistrate to make on order for detaining certain categories of people to prevent them from “acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of the State, or maintenance of public order or maintenance of daily supplies and services essential to the public”
• These categories of people include “any person who is bootlegger, habitual depredator of environment, habitual drug offender, property grabber, dangerous persons, unlawful persons associated with unlawful activities”
• The Act defines public order as having been affected adversely as “directly or indirectly causing or is likely to cause any harm, danger or alarm or feeling of insecurity among the general public or any section thereof or a grave or widespread danger to life, property or public health.”
• Within three weeks of detention, the matter is to be placed before an advisory board which will give its opinion on whether there is sufficient cause for detention of an individual.
• If its opinion is that there is sufficient cause, a person can be detained for up to six months under the act.

3. Recent developments

• The Act suddenly drew attention  when 41 people were booked and detained under it after a call was issued for a 72-hour bandh in various districts of the state from May 10 to 12
• The bandh call had been issued in protest against the 2022 Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission paper leak case in which 42 government employees have been arrested so far
• The protest call was to demand the implementation of 13-point charter of demands, including declaring all examinations conducted by the APPSC where anomalies were found as “null and void”
• Thirty people had been detained under the APUAPA on May 9 and 10 even before the bandh commenced. Eighteen of them were released on May 29, while the remaining were released last week

4. On what Grounds APUAPA proposed

• Activist Gyadi Paying has filed a petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Act and seeking its abolition
• Among the grounds on which this is being sought is that it does not allow a detainee legal representation before the advisory board deliberating on their case, which, the petition states, is a violation of fundamental rights
• The petition also points to a clause of the Act in which if the officer making the detention order has reason to believe that the person for whom the order has been made is absconding, they may apply provisions of the CrPC attaching the person’s property
•  This, the petition states, amounts to “illegal encroachment beyond the jurisdiction of a district magistrate”

Source: indianexpress