After failing to get the states on board on National Counter-terrorism Centre (NCTC) and the BSF amendment Bill, the UPA Government is now seeking the opinion of state governments on a legislation that would empower the Centre to directly intervene in the states in case of a riot or breakdown of constitutional machinery, citing recommendation of the second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC).
The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has posted recommendations of the fifth report of the second ARC titled ‘Public order: Justice for each, peace for all’ on its website seeking the comments of state governments. In its note, the ministry said that out of 165 ARC recommendations, 13 relate to the Centre and the remaining relate to the states.
Though the report was submitted in June 2007, the UPA Government had failed to either share the recommendations or seek the views of the state governments. Despite the fact that law and order is a state subject, the MHA had recently tried its best to operationalise the anti-terror hub NCTC to get overarching powers to central agencies. However, a stiff opposition from states had forced the MHA to put it in cold storage. Now the MHA plans to use ARC recommendation to enact a law empowering it to deploy its forces in states and to even direct such forces in case of major public order problems, which may lead to the breakdown of the constitutional machinery in the state.
However, as per the ARC recommendation, such deployment should be made only after the state concerned fails to act on a ‘direction’ issued by the Union under Article 256 of the Constitution. All such deployments should be only for temporary period, which could be extended by another three months after authorisation by Parliament.
The MHA also wants to avoid recurrence of Assam like situation, during which the state government had to go through several administrative formalities in requesting for the central forces to deal with ethnic violence in five strife-torn districts.