The responsibility of the ‘advisory board’ entrusted to the three-member Goa State Human Rights Commission (GSHRC) under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act is restricted to the issue of detention of individuals violating the narcotics trafficking laws and not to the issue of regulating the poppy and cultivation.
Retired Bombay High Court Judge Utkarsh Bakre and hisco-members on the GSHRC -- former district judges Desmond D’Costa and Pramod V Kamat -- who also man the GSHRC will now also be functioning as the ‘advisory board’ under the NDPS Act.
However, the advisory board’s jurisdiction will be restricted to section 9(a) of the NDPS Act and not other provisions of the law which govern regulation of cultivation of the poppy and cocoa plant, as erroneously reported by The Goan in its Friday’s edition.
