The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council will address the “concerns” of the minorities when it takes up the Communal Violence Bill (Prevention, Control & Rehabilitation of Victims) on July 14. Sources said the focus of the meet will be on protection of the minorities, ensuring justice to them, prevention of communal violence and shielding the population threatened by mass disturbances.
“This bill is of far reaching consequences. We will have to proceed carefully as we address the concerns of the civil society,” said an NAC member.
Among the concerns of the activists are the government moves to “empower” the Centre and the state government, authorise it to declare a communally sensitive area as “disturbed” and protect the public servants by laying stress on proof of “malafide intent” on their part, in the event of a communal violence incident.
Instead, the activists want the state to be held accountable and declare an area communally “disturbed” only on the advice of an independent body comprising of members from the civil society. They also want responsibility of public servants to be fixed during such disturbances for their “acts of omission and commission” without linking it to “proof of malafide intent”.
“The fact of the matter is that many of the major concerns have not been included in the bill by the government, which is not acceptable to us,” said Shabnam Hashmi of the Anhad.
“The UPA government introduced 59 amendments into the Communal Violence Bill 2009, cleared by the Cabinet. The amendments merely tinkered with the bill. They did not make any structural changes,” she said.
Sources said though there is a consensus within the NAC on these concerns, some points of disagreement remain to be sorted out.
Sources said the NAC working group on the bill has held several rounds of consultations with the various civil society groups ahead of the meet where these concerns were expressed.