This report examines two laws enacted by the recently elected BJP-led West Bengal government. The report highlights how the two laws that came into force on 13th July, construct a coercive apparatus that reaches deep into the ordinary civic and political life of the people by bearing heavily on the exercise of their fundamental freedoms. This coercive apparatus, however, is built not through new invention, but through a fresh assembly of old provisions, with diluted safeguards.
The two enactments together function as a catch-all structure creating a regime capable of proscribing a person, not only through deprivation of liberty and arbitrary penalties but also by implicating their family and property, without the need for a single conviction being secured against them. The label ‘goonda,’ unlike a charge under the NSA, strips a political dissenter of any recognition as a political actor at all, before the question of guilt is even raised.
To download the report click below
https://www.pudr.org/publicatiosn-files/2026-7-WB-ACT.pdf
