Monopoly of 4 states over NSA

The National Security Act, 1980, as its name suggests, was enacted to allow people to be taken into preventive custody to stop them from hurting the country's security, its relations with foreign countries, maintain public order, supplies and services essential to the community.

But if recent trends are anything to go by, the law is apparently being used in a distorted manner, for purposes it may not be intended, as well as in states and regions that may not warrant its use. The law allows a person to be jailed for a year without bail and it can be imposed on those already arrested in other cases.

Figures accessed by The Indian Express under the RTI Act from the Union Home Ministry show that the law has been used during 2009-2011 to detain people more in relatively peaceful states such as Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, besides disturbed states such as Manipur and Nagaland.

On the other hand, it has hardly been used to detain people in Naxal violence-hit states such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Chhattisgarh. Other states such as Gujarat, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have cases in single digits, if at all. In fact, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland, which together account for nearly 23 per cent of India's population, registered 93 per cent of the country's detentions under the National Security Act (NSA) during 2009-2011.

According to the Union Home Ministry, the preventive detentions of 3,306 persons were approved and 836 rejected across the country by it during these three years. Of these, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland accounted for 3,076 confirmations and 791 rejections. Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 1761 cases, which is 42.5 percent of all cases. Madhya Pradesh had detained 785, Manipur 1,123 and Nagaland 298. Of them 298 from UP, 20 from MP, 403 from Manipur and 70 from Nagaland were not endorsed by MHA, accounting for 94 percent of the total number of cases rejected from across the country.

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