UAPA Tribunal Upholds Centre's Decision To Ban PFI & Its Affiliates

It was on September 28 that the Ministry of Home Affairs declared the PFI and its associates or affiliates or fronts as "unlawful associations" with immediate effect for a period of 5 years in exercise of the powers under Sec 3(1) of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. Citing links with terrorist organizations and involvement in terror acts, the Centre proscribed PFI and its affiliates Rehab India Foundation (RIF), Campus Front of India (CFI), All India Imams Council (AIIC), National Confederation of Human Rights Organization (NCHRO), National Women's Front, Junior Front, Empower India Foundation and Rehab Foundation, Kerala.

As per Section 3 of the UAPA, where any association has been declared unlawful, the Central Government shall, within thirty days from the date of the publication of the notification, refer the notification to the Tribunal for the purpose of adjudicating whether or not there is sufficient cause for declaring the association unlawful.

As per Section 5, the UAPA Tribunal should consist of one person and the person should be a High Court judge. On receipt of the notification, the Tribunal will call upon the affected association affected by notice in writing to show cause, within thirty days from the date of the service of such notice, why the association should not be declared unlawful.

The Centre had appointed Justice Sharma as the Presiding Officer of the Tribunal in October 2022.  

Before the Tribunal, Union was represented by Additional Solicitor General S. V. Raju, Puneet Mittal, Sonia Mathur, Amit Prasad, Anurag Jain, Madhav Khurana, Anurag Ahluwalia, Sabarish Subramanian, Narendra L. Jain, Zoheb Hossain, Chandan Kumar Pandey, Guntur Pramod Kumar, Annam Venkatesh, Adit Khorana, Sairica Raju, Ankeeta Appanna, Advitiya Awasthi, Hitarth Raja, Udai Khanna, Manu Mishra, Ankit Bhatia, Anshuman singh and Agrimaa Singh.

Ashok Aggarwal, Sridevi Panikkar, Saipan Sheikh appeared for PFI; Mobin Akhtar for AIIC and CFI; Kartik Venu for NWF; Aditya Wadhwa and A. Nowfal for NCHRO; PA Noor Muhamed for Rehab Foundation Kerala and EIF; Gautam Khazanchi and Vaibhav Dubey for Rehab India Foundation