Chennai: Left parties have condemned the Tamil Nadu government for issuing a government order stating that information related to law and order need not be provided under the Right to Information Act.
In this regard, in a statement issued by the state secretary of the Marxist Communist Party, P. Shanmugam, he said, “The Tamil Nadu government has issued a government order stating that information related to law and order need not be provided under the Right to Information Act. This action of the Tamil Nadu government is strongly condemnable. It is against democracy and transparency. Already, several government orders have been issued stating that various kinds of information need not be provided. Now law and order has also been added to that list.
It is a matter of history that the "Right to Information Act" was brought in during the period when the United Progressive Alliance government was in power with the support of the Left parties, due to the Left parties' persistent pressure.
Exempting Tamil Nadu's Public (Law and Order) Department from this law would prevent investigation reports related to custodial deaths from coming to public attention; this would pose a grave threat to human rights. If information including student and farmer protests is also included, it would amount to an attempt to suppress the right to protest guaranteed by the Constitution.
Applying it to preventive measures under the National Security Act would only sharpen a law that is already being used as an authoritarian weapon. Exempting information about religious and caste conflicts could be exploited by reactionary forces. Anything can be brought under the definition of law and order, and information can be denied. This is authoritarian and contrary to the rule of law.
In recent times, police excesses in student and youth protests have been exposed very severely. The police entered college and school campuses and engaged in chaos. Measures to strengthen it as a "surveillance state" and ongoing steps to do so were carried out. This ordinance is also a continuation of the suppression of the people's right to protest.
The very foundation of the Right to Information Act is to ensure transparency in government administration. This government order, which dulls the edge of the Right to Information Act that can serve as a weapon in the hands of ordinary people, must be withdrawn immediately. The Tamil Nadu State Executive Committee of the Marxist Communist Party strongly points out that this will only pave the way for authoritarian, regressive, anti-democratic, and human rights-denying tendencies,” he said.
In a statement issued by the state secretary of the Communist Party of India, M. Veerapandian, regarding this, he said, ‘The Tamil Nadu government has issued a government order making it impossible to obtain many important details related to law and order under the Right to Information Act. Through this government order, the government has exempted the general law and order department from the scope of the Right to Information Act. This is highly condemnable.
Under the law and order division, matters related to religious and caste conflicts, setting up commissions of inquiry on law and order, and follow-up action on their recommendations are handled.
Preventive detention measures carried out under laws such as the National Security Act, representation petitions from persons in preventive detention, and habeas corpus petitions filed on their behalf in the High Court and the Supreme Court, among others, fall under law and order administration.
Tasks such as conducting review meetings on law and order, examining inquiry reports related to police firing, and reviewing inquiry reports concerning deaths in police stations, police torture, and the deaths of remand prisoners are also carried out.
Matters relating to the National Human Rights Commission, sending monthly reports on law and order and communal incidents to the Central Government, and answering questions asked in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha regarding law and order are also included.
Matters related to protests by students, agricultural workers, political parties and others, petitions seeking withdrawal of cases registered for political reasons, religious and caste conflicts, and political and student agitations are also handled by the law and order division.
Issues relating to granting permission to file lawsuits over defamatory articles, news reports, speeches, and the like also fall under this section. It points out that if, once the Tamil Nadu government order comes into effect, details regarding the above issues cannot be obtained under the Right to Information Act, it would pave the way for blatant human rights violations and authoritarian tendencies.
It is not acceptable for the TVK government to follow the practices adopted by the BJP-RSS. The Tamil Nadu State Executive Committee of the Communist Party of India urges and requests the Tamil Nadu government to immediately withdraw the anti-democratic government order exempting law and order administration from the Right to Information Act,” he said.