Mumbai, Aug 10 The Maharashtra government on Monday requested the Bombay High Court to dismiss "frivolous" petitions filed by the Congress, CPI, and AITUC challenging the constitutional validity of the Special Public Security Act, designed to target left-wing extremism, on grounds of potential misuse.
The pleas claimed the law would "suppress constitutionally protected peaceful and legitimate dissent."
When the matter came up for hearing before a bench of Acting Chief Justice Ravindra Ghuge and Justice Gautam Ankhad, the latter recused from hearing the petitions without assigning any reasons.
State Advocate General Milind Sathe sought dismissal of the petitions, saying they are frivolous.
Senior counsel Navroz Seervai, appearing for the AITUC, argued that the Maharashtra Special Public Security Act (MSPSA) is unconstitutional and frivolous, and not the petitions.
After Justice Ankhad's recusal, the pleas would now be heard by another division bench of the high court.
The MSPSA, passed by the state assembly last July and assented to by President Murmu in December, seeks to provide for effective prevention of certain unlawful activities of Left Wing Extremist organisations or similar bodies.
The law specifies four offences for which an individual can be punished: having membership of an unlawful organisation; a non-member raising funds for such an organisation, assisting in its management or committing an unlawful activity.
The Act empowers the state government to tag any suspected organisation as an "unlawful organisation".
The petitions claimed that the law confers "wide-ranging, arbitrary and excessive powers" on the executive to ban organisations and attach their properties based on vague and over-broad definitions of unlawful activity and unlawful organisation.
The petitioners requested the High Court to declare the Act unconstitutional and violative of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution.
The pleas urged the HC to restrain the state government from taking coercive action under MSPSA and stay its enforcement until the hearing.
