Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978

rdf:langString Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978

rdf:langString Jammu and Kashmir

rdf:langString District Magistrate, Baramulla to Abdul Rashid Hajam

rdf:langString an Act whereas it is necessary in the interest of the security of the State and public order to make law providing for the measures hereinafter appearing.

rdf:langString Public Safety Act, 1978

rdf:langString In force

rdf:langString The subject advocates the idea of soft separatism through his articles, tweets and social media posts, which on several occasions have attracted response, amounting to a potential threat to public order.

rdf:langString order shall not be deemed to be invalid or inoperative merely because one or some of the grounds is or are–– vague, non-existent, not relevant, not connected or not proximately connected with such person, or invalid for any other reasons whatsoever...

rdf:langString CHAPTER I Preliminary

rdf:langString CHAPTER II Access to certain premises and areas

rdf:langString CHAPTER V Miscellaneous

rdf:langString Besides being a member of JEI an organisation which is anti-national in character, [you] have always been challenging the accession of the State with the Union of India... You and your party men propagate and advocate among the people of the State that they have yet to decide their future which can only be done through plebiscite...

rdf:langString CHAPTER III Maintenance of communal and regional harmony

rdf:langString CHAPTER IV Power to make orders detaining certain persons

rdf:langString The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 (PSA) is a preventive detention law under which a person is taken into custody to prevent them from acting harmfully against "the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order" in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (now a union territory). Whereas PSA applies only to Jammu and Kashmir, it is very similar to the National Security Act that is used by the central and other state governments of India for preventive detention. It was introduced by the then-Chief Minister, Sheikh Abdullah, in 1978 to ostensibly stop the smuggling of timber. However, the political motives behind the law became clearer when Sheikh Abdullah used it for the first time against political rivals. Since its usage in the late 1970s, it is still being used today for "the security of the state". Following the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, PSA was one of the state laws which was retained under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act of 2019. In 2015, the government made public the figure of 16,329 persons having been detained under the act since 1988, nearly all from Kashmir. National Crime Records Bureau records only 16 women detentions in the period 1995–2008. In February 2020, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court of India by Bhim Singh of the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party terming PSA "as dead and ultra vires".