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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NAC to seek Ministries' view on communal violence draft Bill by Smita Gupta

NAC to seek Ministries' view on communal violence draft Bill by Smita Gupta

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published Published on Apr 30, 2011   modified Modified on Apr 30, 2011
The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council will send the Working Group's Draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 to the Union Home and Law Ministries within a week to solicit their comments, especially on its “legal dimensions,” NAC sources told The Hindu on Thursday.

Once the Centre responds to the draft, the Working Group will revise the Bill and bring it back to the NAC for its approval.

The NAC also expects to get feedback from the State governments and the public at large by then, as it will place the draft Bill on its website the day it writes to the Centre.

Clarification sought

At Thursday's meeting, while most NAC members were appreciative of the Working Group's efforts, clarifications were sought on the nature of the national and State authorities the draft Bill provided for, and whether these would clash with the government. The Working Group stressed, the sources said, that the National Authority would not “supersede the existing law enforcement machinery” or “disempower or paralyse the existing administrative and justice mechanisms,” but would play a primarily advisory role.

However, “that advice,” the sources underlined, “would be located in the context of accountability.” So if a government authority ignored the National Authority's advice on the possibility of impending violence and if there was a carnage which could have been prevented, there would be “a paper trail that will come in handy in a court of law to prove dereliction of duty, both acts of commission and omission.”

The sources pointed out that they wanted the National Authority to have more powers than say the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC): “The NHRC's advice to the Gujarat government was ignored and there were no consequences for those who ignored the advice.”

The draft Bill proposes that the National Authority have seven members to be selected by a panel consisting of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Union Home Minister and the leaders of all recognised national parties in the Lok Sabha — currently, apart from the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, there are four of them: the Nationalist Congress Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India.

While accountability on the part public officials is at the heart of this draft Bill, politicians too will be covered in the provision on command responsibility — that has been made an offence to ensure accountability at the highest level, to cover instances of mass violence such as the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984 or the more recent anti-Christian violence in Kandhmal district in Odisha (Orissa).

The Hindu, 30 April, 2011, http://www.hindu.com/2011/04/30/stories/2011043069001100.htm


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