First introduced in May 1985, TADA was meant to be a temporary measure for two years.
However, it has been regularly extended every two years. The latest was in May 1993. Its area of operation began with just one state and two Union Territories then extended to cover most parts of the country. And there is practically no political party or group, and no social tension left untouched by TADA now. The government, on its part, points out that the country is going through an extraordinary situation with increasing terrorist violence. Hence the need for an extraordinary legislation and its repeated extension.
There is no doubt that the complexity and scale of violence in our social and political life are on the increase. In recent decades more and more social tensions are operating outside the constitutionally ordained institutional framework. These problems be they communal tensions and consequent anti-social acts like bomb blasts; or border region problems like Punjab, Kashmir and Assam; or regional aspirations like Gorkhaland, Bodo, Karbi and Jharkhand; or movements against social oppression like Naxalite movement – have each their specific characteristics and social origins. They vary in their ideology and politics. In fact, even in violence, they differ in approach, targets, scale, and technology. To club together all these divergent problems and then attempt to deal with them through a legislation like TADA is bound to make the whole exercise, sooner or later, into a silly joke. As reflected in that commercial film.
The process by which TADA became such a farce, however, has entailed human suffering. Much of it is untold and unrecorded. The travails of ordinary men and women detained under the Act are not a result of what are described as ‘stray cases of misuse’. They are structurally built into the Act. It confers, with no checks and balances, extraordinary powers on the police and the political party in power.
After eight years of its functioning, the Act has led to criticism from various quarters. And popular opposition from below. That is perhaps the reason why the government has accepted in the latest version of the Act, some of the amendments that it had earlier rejected. These changes however are marginal. The complete repeal of India’s most draconian legislation involves long years of struggle ahead. Towards that end this report seeks to make a modest contribution.
To download the report, click below:
Lawless Roads: A Report on TADA, 1985-1993
