Gujarat passes GUJCOC bill again,rejects President’s suggestions

The Gujarat Assembly on Tuesday re-introduced and passed the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime bill unanimously in the absence of boycotting Congress MLAs.

The bill was passed in its original form(just with one difference that the word ‘Organise Crime’ has been replaced by ‘Terrorism’), rejecting suggestions by President Pratibha Patil to modify it.

The suggestion made by the President should not be approved by the Assembly.

“If we follow President’s suggestions, GUJCOC Bill will become just another Indian Penal Code without serving any purpose. Gujarat is bordering state with Pakistan. Our constitutional fathers favored a federal structure for the country in which each state has been given equal rights. Many other states of the country has such bill.When we first proposed GUJCOC, a law to fight terrorism, POTA was in force, so we had prepared a law to fight orgnanised crime. But now when the POTA has been repealed we do not have specific law to fight terrorism. So, we have introduced the word ‘terrorist’ and defined terrorists’ activity in the Bill. It is injustice with Gujarat….The Centre is not approving the bill for the state when Maharashtra already has such a bill,” Minister of State for Home Amit Shah said.

It should be noted here that After the advice by the Union Cabinet in last June, the President had returned the GUJCOC Bill suggesting three changes.

The President on the Union Cabinet’s advice had told the State government to delete Clause 16 of the GUJCOC Bill which says a confession made by a person before a police officer shall be admissible in the trial.

The other two changes were in Clause 20(2)(B) and Clause 20 (4). The President had told the State government to bring the provision in line with the provision to Section 43D (2) and Section 43 D (5) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2008.

Now the Bill will be sent for President’s consent once again.