New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday expressed “grave concerns” over the government’s Post Office Bill, saying the proposed legislation was a “half-baked reform” and “far more detrimental” to the fundamental rights of Indians than the colonial-era law it seeks to supplant.

Initiating the discussion in Lok Sabha on the Post Office Bill, 2023 that seeks to repeal the 125-year-old Indian Post Office Act, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor slammed the government, alleging that over the past decade, it has been often seen that this dispensation, in the guise of “decolonizing our minds” and “updating colonial-era laws”, bringing in legislation that is equally, if not more, “arbitrary and unreasonable”.

According to the proposed legislation, “the central government may, by notification, empower any officer to intercept, open or detain any item in the interest of the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, emergency or public safety, or upon the occurrence of any contravention of any of the provisions of any law for the time being in force”.

Tharoor said that even as it seeks to revise the colonial bill, this bill retains its draconian and colonial provisions, that too while eliminating the burden of accountability which a governmental enterprise like India Post ought, constitutionally, to shoulder.

Speaking on the bill after Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw moved it for consideration, Tharoor said that as someone who has great respect for the minister, he is disappointed to see him putting “this half-baked reform” before the House.

“No debate on any piece of legislation happens in a vacuum. There is always a context and around a month or so ago, several outspoken members of the Opposition, including myself, received a threat from Apple, warning us of the fact that ‘state-sponsored attackers’ were trying to infiltrate our phones, by doing which they could access sensitive data and even hack our phones’ camera and microphones,” the MP from Thiruvananthapuram said.

“And was it really so long ago that the threat of Pegasus loomed large on us all, surveilling our every move, tracking our every utterance? These are realities we must bear in mind as we begin debating this Bill, which strikes at the heart of our constitutional values, our fundamental rights, compelling every ordinary Indian to live at the mercy of our state’s pervasive and suspicious mistrust of its own citizens,” he said.

Tharoor argued that the government, through the bill, grants itself sweeping powers to “infringe upon” the citizens’ right to freedom of speech and expression, as guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution, and their right to privacy, which the Supreme Court in K.S. Puttuswamy recognized as being a subset of the right to life and liberty enshrined in Article 21.

“The government assumes these powers through Section 9 of the Bill, which entitles it, using merely a notification, to ’empower any officer to cause any item in course of transmission by the Post Office to be intercepted, opened or detained in the interest of the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states…or upon the occurrence of any contravention of any of the provisions of this Act or any other law’,” Tharoor said.

He said these are strikingly vague grounds and can be construed to cover anything that the government does not like.

“As it stands, the bill is far more detrimental to the fundamental rights of Indians than the colonial-era law it seeks to supplant,” Tharoor said.

He asserted that the bill has no grievance redressal mechanism.

By keeping Indians in the dark as to the interception, detention or destruction of their correspondence and consignments, and by not allowing them to contest these decisions, the government has violated the principles of natural justice and due process of law, he said.

In this regard, the 2023 bill is also violative of Article 14 of our Constitution, the Congress MP added.

“The problem of this Bill not having a grievance redressal mechanism becomes especially agonizing when we look at Section 10. What an irony it is that today, the private courier services in our country are far more accountable to the people of India than the Indian Postal Service, which is an undertaking of the central government,” he said.

Interestingly, the prescription of liability is itself a power that the government assigns itself, he said.

“I must say to the minister that when you yourself can decide where you will be accountable to the people, when you yourself can choose whether you want to be accountable to the people, and how much you are accountable to the people, that means you are not accountable at all,” Tharoor said.

To send across a letter or parcel through India Post, then, is to “fling it into a black hole”, with no accountability whatsoever as to whether it will reach its destination, he said.

“If this transformation comes at the cost of endangering every Indian’s right to free speech and expression, every Indian’s right to privacy, every Indian’s access to natural justice and the due process of law, then, the remedy is worst than the disease. Therefore, I would say, this bill is a great disappointment and I request the minister to return to the drawing board and come back with something better,” he said.