UAPA

Story hook

It is 2 September 2019. The Lok Sabha passes the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Bill 2019 by 287-8. Home Minister Amit Shah moves three key changes: (1) individuals — not just organisations — can be designated as terrorists; (2) NIA can investigate UAPA cases anywhere in India without prior state-government referral; (3) NIA can attach property linked to terror funding.

A few days earlier, Masood Azhar of Jaish-e-Mohammad has been designated by the UN Security Council as a global terrorist (1 May 2019) after a decade-long Indian campaign blocked by China. The 2019 amendment lets Delhi designate Masood, Hafiz Saeed, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, and Dawood Ibrahim as "individual terrorists" under domestic law. Within days, MHA notifications dated 4 September 2019 designate the first four.

The amendment passes with the BJP government justifying it as a counter-terror necessity, while Opposition MPs (Asaduddin Owaisi, P. Chidambaram, Manish Tewari) warn that designating individuals without judicial review could chill dissent. Civil rights groups (PUCL, Amnesty India) call it the "new TADA". The 2024 SC judgment in Sajeer Bin Abdul Khader v. Union of India would uphold the provision with read-down conditions on procedural fairness.

This file maps the UAPA — its evolution from a 1967 ban-on- secessionist-org statute into India's primary federal counter-terror

• counter-Maoism + counter-organised-crime law — and the constitutional debate.

Why this matters for UPSC

Asked virtually every year in GS-II/GS-III on counter-terror laws

• civil liberties; multiple Prelims items on UAPA amendments, NIA's role, individual designation, organisations banned. Interview boards probe Watali (2019) bail, NIA functioning, federalism implications.