Sumanthiran accuses govt. of obsession with unconstitutional Bureau of Rehabilitation Bill

By Saman Indrajith

The government seems to have some kind of obsession with the Bureau of Rehabilitation Bill deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP M.A. Sumanthiran said in Parliament on Thursday.

“The Supreme Court has made an excellent determination on this bill. I have commended this determination in Parliament. This determination specifically says that the bill as a whole violates the constitution. Nevertheless, since it’s their constitutional duty to specify what provisions need a two thirds majority, what provisions need a referendum in addition, and how those can be remedied they have made certain suggestions. And the government, although the bill has been looked upon as something obnoxious to the rule of law and constitutionalism, still wants to pursue this. So that’s a concern,” he said.

Sumanthiran said one of the main concerns they had was who would constitute the bureau. He said that he did not understand how the military or security officials could rehabilitate those suffering from drug addiction.

“It has to be experts in that area and it’s not an easy task to rehabilitate drug dependence. The Supreme Court has very specifically struck down different categories of persons to be subjected to this and said for drug dependence it can or any other person identified by law, meaning that such a person today should have been identified by law,” he said.

However, the government wants to keep the bill vague for its own purposes. He said that another fundamental issue with the bill is that according to norms when a person is deprived of his personal liberty that must happen only after a judicial pronouncement. The bureau of rehabilitation bill is a departure from this, he said.

“Here we are envisaging a situation where, without court finding a person guilty of certain things, a person can be incarcerated, I am using that word advisedly because he has been deprived of his personal liberty, there are provisions in the bill that says that if he runs away you can catch him and bring him back. The one important fundamental in a drug rehab programme is the voluntariness of the person. That the person must want to be rehabilitated, you can’t force it down his throat. So, in addition to a judicial pronouncement in a matter where drug dependency is concerned we must also have a medical opinion. Both those conditions attached, then you can set up a rehabilitation centre but it must be administered by experts in that field, not security experts,” he said.