NEW DELHI: The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Tribunal has scheduled a hearing on September 3 where it is expecting a representative of the ‘unlawful’ LTTE to appear and reply to a show-cause notice why the five-year ban imposed on it by the Indian Union should not continue.
But there's a problem. No one knows where to send the notice, which was issued on July 17. As a banned outfit in India and Sri Lanka, LTTE has no address. The notice issued by the Tribunal, therefore, is not directed to any one and is just addressed to the banned outfit: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
It was due to such “problems”, explains a source that Parliament passed an amendment in 2013 by which the ban period for any outfit found to be engaged in 'unlawful activities', inimical to the state or to the cause of humanity, was extended from two to five years.
Thereafter, the Indian Government using the amendment clamped a five-year ban on LTTE in February 2013. But bound by law and international norms, it set up a Tribunal under Delhi High Court judge G P Mittal to adjudicate on the matter—“whether or not there is sufficient cause of declaring the LTTE as an Unlawful Association as required” by the Act.
But Justice Mittal and the Tribunal were in a spot when they tried to issue the show-cause notice. The Tribunal did the next best thing and sent the notice to the Union Home Ministry.
The MHA, too, was no less flummoxed. Not knowing where to forward it, the Ministry has put it up on its official website hoping someone would respond. Simultaneously, it has also sent a copy to the state police in Tamil Nadu, in case they could locate an address. Last heard, the TN police are considering putting out a notice in the newspapers, to see if any one responds.
“They cannot maintain any office here in India as it'll then be immediately sealed and people arrested under the Act. It's a curious situation, but the law has to be followed, however grave and overwhelming the reason for banning the organisation,” a source explained. In case no one turns up, the Tribunal will take an ex-parte decision endorsing the five-year ban. Till then, they are quietly looking for an Eelam activist.