Officials to face music over communal strife

The NAC on Thursday studied a draft of the proposed Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011, which, according to it, primarily seeks to make public officials ‘accountable’ for causing or failing to control riots. The “failure of command responsibility” has been made an offence to ensure “accountability at the highest level”.

The panel noted that a major stumbling block in prosecuting public servants was the provision for granting sanction under Section 196 and 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

The draft of the proposed Communal Violence Bill provides that if sanction to prosecute an accused public servant was not granted by the state government within a period of 30 days from the date of seeking it, it would be deemed that the required go-ahead to put him or her on trial had been granted.

A Working Group of NAC has been engaged in preparing a draft for the proposed Communal Violence Bill for the past several months. The group’s convener and eminent social activist Farah Naqvi on Thursday presented a draft of the proposed legislation to the NAC in a meeting, which was chaired by Gandhi.

The proposed legislation seeks to plug the loopholes that make it difficult to nail public servants responsible for inciting communal violence or allowing it to spread, instead of controlling it, as, for example, allegedly happened during the 2002 Gujarat riot.
The draft Bill provides for constitution of a National Authority and State Authorities as the primary monitoring and grievance redressal mechanisms.

According to Naqvi, the principle behind the provision for creation of such authorities is “not to supersede the existing law enforcement machinery, nor to disempower or paralyse the existing administrative and justice mechanism, but rather to strengthen them and make them more accountable.”

The proposed legislation seeks to strengthen the rights of the victim, through a series of new provisions. It also casts legal duties on the State to provide rescue, relief, rehabilitation, compensation and restitution to the victims.

Certain new offences – sexual assault, enforced disappearances, torture, persecution and enforced migration – have been defined as offences in the draft legislation. Besides, widespread and systemic mass violence is also defined specifically as ‘organised’ communal and targeted violence.

The NAC would put the draft legislation in public domain and seek feedbacks. The Working Group will review the draft after receiving feedbacks from public and place the final draft before the council again on May 25 next.

The advisory panel then study and approve the draft and it would then be sent to the Government.