Judges-led advisory board to review NSA cases formed

The detained person can be held for 10 days without being told the charges against him or her.
Delhi high court. (File Photo | Shekhar Yadav, EPS)
Delhi high court. (File Photo | Shekhar Yadav, EPS)

NEW DELHI: An advisory board comprising three sitting judges of the Delhi High Court has been constituted by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to review the cases registered under the stringent National Security Act (NSA). Those persons charged under the Act can be detained for up to a year without any charge.

According to an official notification issued on Saturday, Justice Yogesh Khanna will be the chairman of the advisory board while justices Chandra Dhari Singh and Rajnish Bhatnagar will be members of the high-powered body. Such an advisory board is constituted under Section 9 of the 1980 Act.

The NSA empowers the government to detain a person for up to 12 months without a charge if it considers the individual a threat to national security or to prevent him or her from disrupting public order. The detained person can be held for 10 days without being told the charges against him or her. As per the Act the detainee can appeal only before the advisory board for relief but will not be allowed a lawyer during the trial.

“In the case of every NSA detainee, the government concerned shall, within three weeks from the date of detention, place before the advisory board the grounds on which the order has been made and the representation, if any, made by the detainee,” reported an agency.

“The advisory board shall, after considering the materials placed before it and after hearing the detainee, submit its report to the government within seven weeks from the date of detention of the person concerned,” it said.

No official statistics since 2019
Going by data, nearly 1,200 people across the country were detained until 2018. There is no official data available about NSA detainees since 2019. It was during the Indira Gandhi government of 1980 that the NSA was enacted.

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