The life of a highly controversial law, the Terrorist and Destructive Activities (Control and Punishment) Act, has been extended. The law, which had received a two-year term from the parliament while Sher Bahadur Deuba was prime minister in 2002, was revived through a royal ordinance on April 10, the day it was to expire, for another six months. Under the Constitution, the King can, on the recommendation of the Council of Ministers, promulgate an ordinance if it becomes necessary to take immediate action, except when both Houses of Parliament are in session. The Constitution says that such an ordinance should not prejudice or undermine the provisions of the Constitution.

But TADA gives security forces sweeping powers, such as arresting anybody without a warrant and detaining anybody suspected of having terrorist links for 90 days without any trial. The 1990 Constitution, however, does not specifically envisage such arrests and detentions. And, therefore, these provisions hardly embrace the spirit of the Constitution. The undesirability of TADA had made the political parties approve the Act only for two years, that, too, under the circumstances of the emergency. Implicit in it was an assumption that a solution to the Maoist problem would be found within that period. Legal and military means have, by and large, failed to provide any promise of a solution. But, unfortunately, the State has made no progress towards a political settlement. And the Maoists’ violent activities have increased in both spread and intensity.

Everybody had known for the past two years that the ordinance would expire on April 10 this year. It does not, therefore, represent an immedicate action. The ordinance has come on the ground that there is no parliament in existence now. This is so because those who have promised to hold the elections for the past 18 months and those who had pledged to do so within six months before that have proved incapable of fulfilling their duty. What if, in six months, the Parliament cannot be restored? Will the ordinance be renewed again? This would be taking liberties with the Constitution. Moreover, the victims of TADA have often turned out to be those other than Maoists, who, already in control of most of the countryside, are out to fight the State militarily. Krishna Jung Rayamajhi, a former Supreme Court judge who had dealt with such cases in 2002, told the press last year that most of the detainees under TADA had been arrested without any proof at all. Amnesty International the other day compared Nepal’s human rights situation to that of Iraq. Therefore, if we are to prevent the country from being mired deeper into the law of the jungle, genuine efforts towards a political settlement need to be started without further loss of time.