Malik says State will mull over NPR questionnaire
Mumbai: Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh announced that the state government was seeking legal opinion on constituting a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe into the January 2018 Bhima-Koregaon case. While, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) national spokesperson Nawab Malik on Monday announced that the three parties of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) shall meet to decide on what questionnaire to put during the ensuing Census data collective drive and the National Population Register (NPR).
Malik argued that although by law the state government is bound to hand over the case to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as per section 10 of the NIA Act, 2008 the state has powers to conduct parallel investigation. He said this while speaking to newspersons after NCP chief Sharad Pawar held meeting of party ministers earlier in the day.
The provisions of Chapter 3 of the NIA section 10. Power of State Government to investigate Scheduled Offences – reads thus “save as otherwise provided in this Act, nothing contained in this Act shall affect the powers of the State Government to investigate and prosecute any Scheduled Offence or other offences under any law for the time being in force”.
However, section 6 of the NIA Act, sub-section (6) reads thus “where any direction has been given under sub-section (4) or sub-section (5), the State Government and any police officer of the State Government investigating the offence shall not proceed with the investigation and shall forthwith transmit the relevant documents and records to the Agency. Sub-section (7) states further “for the removal of doubts, it is hereby declared that till the Agency takes up the investigation of the case, it shall be the duty of the officer-in-charge of the police station to continue the investigation”.
Malik argued that NPR is a data collection and has been conducted through Aadhar. He added that the Centre has put additional questions in the NPR which forms part of the Census operations. Pleading ignorance as to what stand other state’s have taken in this matter, he said that in Maharashtra though, the three MVA constituent parties shall sit together and decide on which questionnaire to be put in the exercise. He said that although the program for Census exercise has been decided, the questionnaire has not been decided.
However, officials in the MHA while speaking to TheNews21.com on conditions of anonymity disclosed that the State Government has no authority or role to play in the framing of Census questionnaire which is the sole prerogative of the Directorate of Census operations in India.
Reacting to the NCP spokespersons statement on NIA probe, state Bharatiya Janata Party vice president Dr Kirit Somaiya in a statement wanted to know from Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray as to who really is running the government. “Who really is running the Thackeray government, Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar or Rahul Gandhi. Because the NCP is unhappy, a decision is made to set up SIT in the Bhima-Koregaon case”, remarked Somaiya.
Referring to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray having already transferring the probe into the case to the NIA, the BJP leader wanted to know as to why again an SIT probe. Somaiya added that ever since the three party MVA government has come to power, there are differences visible in the government. He added that why a SIT probe is being mooted just because NCP chief Sharad Pawar is unhappy.
