In Re: Jamaat-e-Islami, Jammu And Kashmir – Anatomy Of A UAPA Tribunal

In recent times, amendments to the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act that allow the central government to designate individuals as "terrorists", have been in the news. The central government has replied that the notification's setting out that the association was "supporting extremism and militancy", "indulging in anti national and subversive activities" and activities "to disrupt the territorial integrity" and so on, was sufficient factual detail to constitute the "grounds" for its decision, and in any case further factual details were set out in a separate background note it had supplied to the Tribunal. The Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir Tribunal, therefore, will be first required to decide whether the central government's notification put the association to adequate notice of the "grounds" for its action; and secondly, it must decide whether the UAPA's requirement that the notification itself set out the grounds can be said to have been met if the grounds are not set out in the notification but in a "background note" supplied to the Tribunal. That is, the association argued that the government had set out a justification for banning the association in the notification; when it was challenged that the justification did not contain the requisite facts which could be said to be "grounds" that give the Association notice of the case against it, the Central government claimed that those facts were in the background note; but finally, the case the central government sought to prove before the Tribunal was of entirely different facts that found no mention even in the background note. The State's invocation of the exceptions under the UAPA has gone so far as to submit what it claims is the association's own register of members – a crucial piece of evidence as per the State – in a sealed cover behind the association's back; to refuse to prove FIRs – also crucial pieces of evidence – in accordance with acceptable rules of evidence and proof; and to effectively add more grounds even after the Notification that is supposed to be the basis of the government's "opinion" has been passed.