Bill on communal violence has failed to achieve its purpose, says rights activists

New Delhi – In the wake of the proposed Bill that seeks to prevent and control communal violence in India, prominent human rights groups, women rights groups and social activists have denounced the legislation, claiming that it has failed to achieve its purpose.

In the light of the Gujarat riots of 2002 that have claimed the lives of over 2000 Muslims and the dangers of increasing communalization all over the country, the need to legislate an anti–communal violence law was felt. Such a law was expected to empower the citizens against the government, the police and the civil administration but instead the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill 2005 sough to strengthen the power and authority of the state against them by giving politicians, administration and the police wide powers.

According to the rights groups, the government ought to have consulted civil society groups or “attempt to forge a national consensus on a Bill of such importance.”

Though the Bill provides for punishment of public servants who fail to prevent communal violence, yet, it requires consent of the state government. Moreover, the power of the Center to order armed forces to intervene under the Bill (in cases where the state is a party in the violence) is negated by a provision, which requires the Center to seek permission of states for such an intervention.

The Bill, strangely, is also silent on the issue of mass sexual violence. There is no definition of sexual assault to include the kind of violence women suffered in Gujarat.

The only protection the Bill purports to give women survivors of communal violence is Section 376 of the IPC – the much–maligned rape law whose evidence requirements are extremely difficult to meet during communal conflicts.

The Bill also fails to address the problem of increasing communalization of society and the polity at all levels and does not acknowledge or bring in its purview areas such as driving minorities out of erstwhile mixed settlements, social and economic boycott of particular groups, discrimination in employment and communal writings in text books.

Right of survivors of communal violence to rescue, relief and rehabilitation has been introduced in the Bill in a vague manner without stipulating any mandatory national norms for a rehabilitation scheme.

According to news reports, while rejecting the draft, the rights groups and activists have called upon the UPA Government to open negotiations to prepare a law that can “genuinely'' protect the citizen from communal violence and make governments more accountable to them.