Date: 24th Jan 2006

To

Mr. Shivraj Patil,
Honourable Home Minster of India.

Subject: Suggestions for Amending the Communal Violence (Prevention), Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2005 – Bill No. CXV of 2005


Sir,

At the outset, we thank you on behalf of the ‘Citizens’ Initiative, Mumbai’ for giving us an opportunity to attend this meet [today in Mumbai], get to know your points of view and convey ours.

We must also thank you for taking the initiative to legislate the subject Act for which there arose strong and widespread demands in the wake of the Gujarat bloodbath sponsored by the state government. It is indeed some matter of gratification, in the current era of cynicism and duplicity that the UPA government is now going to honour the commitment given in the Common Minimum Programme drawn up as the roadmap for governance. That some of the suggestions proffered by various human rights and minority rights organisations have been incorporated in the Bill before placing it before the Rajya Sabha further raises our hopes regarding the noble intentions of the government.

So we will take this opportunity to place our well-deliberated views before you for acceptance and incorporation.

Before going into the specifics, we will like to make a couple of broad points.

‘Communal violence’ has three clearly identifiable stages: before during and after. The Act, in order to be effective must have provisions to adequately intervene in all the three stages. It must aim to nip the build up, in the form of rumour mongering, hate campaigns etc, in the bud. It must control the violence, while it’s on, and protect/rescue the (actual and potential) victims. And finally, after the violence is over the victims must be compensated and rehabilitated and the culprits quickly identified and brought to book. It’s our experience that the state administration and the political leadership, more often than not, are complicit. Even the central government connives. The Gujarat bloodbath is the grossest, but not the only, example. Hence, there must be autonomous institutions with adequate representations from the likely victim communities to ensure proper implementation of the Act. Other measures must also be taken to ensure unbiased approach on the part of the State. Unaccounted powers in the hands of the administration are only going to further compound the woes of the victims, so a fine balance is to be maintained.


Suggestions:

The name be changed to ‘Sectarian and Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2005.The change of nomenclature is called for to widen the ambit of the Act to include violence directed against any ‘minority/marginalized group’ defined/constituted in terms of religion, caste, language, ethnicity etc. This definition must be suitably incorporated in the body of the Bill.

The Bill must come into operation all over the country, except for J&K, once it’s passed by the parliament and the gazette notification is issued in a time bound manner.

The Bill must provide for the constitution of a body at the state level to be appointed by the governor consisting of the representatives of the SHRC, State Minorities Commission, State Women’s Commission and State SC and ST Commission to be chaired by a sitting High Court judge nominated by the Chief Justice of the High Court. (The states where any of such bodies is/are not in existence, the corresponding national body would nominate a member who would be otherwise eligible to be a member of such a state level body.) This body would advise the state government in the subject context, either suo moto or on receipt of complaints. Its advice as regards declaration of ‘disturbed areas’ would be mandatory. The NHRC should also be empowered to issue formal advices to this Committee in this behalf, which has to be taken due note of.

The Section 153(a) of the IPC must be incorporated, with the deletion of the provision pertaining to the requirement of prior state sanction.

No prior state sanction must be required for proceeding against any delinquent state functionary.

The provision for vicarious criminal liability must be incorporated to cover up to the highest level of command chain.

Loss of life must be compensated by the states on a uniform basis throughout the country. Loss of property must be compensated to the extent of full replacement value. Norms must be fixed for compensation for sexual violence, properly defined. The case for compensation must be reviewed by the state level committee mentioned above. The compensation must be paid fully and quickly. This must not be linked with the criminal cases filed against the perpetrators.

The bar for declaring an area ‘disturbed’ must be clearly defined and not kept too high.

The prosecutors for criminal trials must be appointed only after due consultation with the victims and with the approval of the state-level committee.

Special forces must be raised with adequate representations from the various minorities and women.

All the provisions of the Bill must be brought in alignment.

We hope you will kindly consider our suggestions with due seriousness and suitably incorporate these to make
the Act really effective as we all intend to.


Thanking you,


Yours sincerely

Mohammed Anees

Convenor, Organising Committee

Citizens Initiative on the Communal Violence Bill

Organising Committee
Adv Yusuf Muchhala(Chairperson, Organising Committee),
Dr Ram Puniyani (Ekta), Adv Mihir Desai(ICHRL), Dolphy
Dsouza(BCS), Adv Saeed Akhtar, Kamayani(CEHAT), Jatin
Desai(PIPFPD), Sukla Sen(PMI), Adv Sameena
Dalwai(ICHRL), Fr.Allwyn D'silva(DRTC), Nanji Khemji
Thakkar(NKT, College), Farid Batatawala,
A.D.Golandaz(AITUC), Meena Menon(Focus), Flavia
Agnes(Majlis), Asad bin Saif(BUILD), Syed
Iftekhar(Editor, Shodhan), Jyoti Punwani, Ravi
Duggal(CEHAT), Louis Dsouza, Dr.
Rehmatullah(AICMEUS), Lionel Fernandes, Adv Sagheer
Khan, Smita Shah(RYS), Haroon Mozawala(Khaire Ummat
Trust), Saumya Uma(WRAG), Dr Azeemuddin(MPJ), Sarfaraz
Arzoo(Editor, Hindustan)