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EIGHT YEARS OF FUTILITY
* The bill was introduced on August 29, 2008
* Referred for review to House Select Committee
* House dissolved; committee lapses in 2012
* Present govt makes bids in 2012 and 2014
* On both counts, the draft Bill falls flat
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PANAJI: Eight years since being drafted, the Goa Police Bill, 2008, appears to be on its final walk towards the shelf.
In response to a question by St Cruz MLA Antanasio ‘Babush Monserrate in the recently concluded budget session of Goa legislature, Home Minister and Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar stated that the Home Department had prepared a draft Police Bill, which was placed before the Thirteenth Session of the Fifth Goa Legislative Assembly in 2011.
A day after it was introduced, on August 29, 2008, the 68-page Bill was referred for review to a Select Committee of the House, headed by then Home Minister Ravi Naik and including the then MLAs Nilkanth Halarnkar, Manohar Parrikar, Victoria Fernandes, Agnelo Fernandes, Chandrakant Kavalekar and Mauvin Godinho.
The committee lapsed on dissolution of the House in March 2012 and with it so did the Bill under Article 196 (5) of the Constitution of India.
“The Bill needs to be passed by Legislature before it could be implemented. Bill as such cannot be implemented,” stated the Home Minister in his response while also refusing to offer any time frame for the enactment of the Bill.
After the change in government in 2012, present government adopted steps to introduce the bill in the House; once in 2012 when the draft Bill made its way to the desk of former CM Manohar Parrikar and for the second time in 2014 when the government disclosed its intention to move the Bill to the law department for vetting.
However, on both the counts, the draft Bill could not enter the floor of the House.
Former CM and Margao MLA Digambar Kamat informed that the 2008 Bill was adopted in accordance with the Supreme Court’s directives of September 22, 2006.
“SC directives laid down guidelines for such Acts in each State,” Kamat said.
The seven binding directives aimed at introducing police reform and ordered compliance from states and union territories. Apart from functional autonomy for the police, the directives laid down the requirement of State-level and district-level Police Complaints Authority, state police accountability authority headed by a Lokayukta and State Police Commission and Police Establishment Board among other things.
However, back in 2008, activists under the banners of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Citizens Initiatives for Communal Harmony (CICH) and the Council for Social Justice and Peace (CSJP) expressed reservations against the nature of the Goa Police Bill and the manner in which it was drafted and introduced without due consultation with the public.
Fr Maverick Fernandes of CSJP stated, “There were several glaring clauses in the draft Bill such as creation of special security zones, special police officers and so on, which were dreadful enough to lay the groundwork for a police State.”
