CPI(M) demands withdrawal of two new sections in ordinance for heathcare workers

The CPI(M) on Saturday demanded that two new sections in the newly promulgated ordinance to provide protection to health workers should be withdrawn as they went against the "principle of common law".

The Centre, on Wednesday, promulgated an ordinance to amend the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 to punish those guilty of attacks on doctors and healthcare workers.

"The CPI(M) welcomes any legal protection so necessary for our health workers in the fight against the pandemic.

"However, the ordinance issued by the President of India has certain serious flaws. Section 3 (c) and 3 (d) together violate the principle of common law accepted and followed by all countries in the world including the criminal law jurisprudence in India on the vital issue of presumption of innocence until proven guilty. These two sections together overturn this principle on its head. This is open to gross misuse, harassment and targeting," the Left party said in a statement.

Section 3(d) also enables the court to presume intention, motive, knowledge, or belief on the part of the accused to commit the violent act, and the burden is on the accused to rebut it. Section 3(d) says that the court can declare a fact to have been proven only when it believes it exists beyond reasonable doubt, and not merely when its existence is established by a preponderance of probability.

Hence these two clauses 3(c) and 3(d) must be removed from the ordinance, it said.

While the provision of 3(c) in the ordinance deals with presumption of certain offences, 3(d) deals with presumption of culpable mental state.