Decoding Mcoca – Two Decades Of Tackling Organized Crime In India
Published by Manupatra
In the life of any country, there are many watershed moments, calling for the departure from the prevalent mechanism to deal with situations and look for new horizons. The enactment of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA) was one such step that was taken to deal with Organised Crime in the State of Maharashtra. Soon, it was realised by other States also that Organised crime plagues the entire country and needs to be addressed by other States as well, law and order being the State subject under Article 246 of the Constitution of India. Many State Legislatures enacted laws similar to MCOCA, however, for a variety of reasons, perception based or otherwise, they failed to get Presidential assent. Delhi being the country’s capital, where law and order is under the Union Government, the nodal ministry being the Ministry of Home Affairs, MCOCA came to be adopted in 2002 for the National Capital Territory of Delhi.
Given the objective that MCOCA aims to tackle, it was inevitable that it would contain watertight provisions to be applied in a highly regulated regime, that would conflict with the concerns of liberty, which remains a consideration in the mechanism of ordinary criminal law and in that sense, MCOCA is a sui generis mechanism of substantive as well as procedural law.