Prevention of Communal Violence Bill or Communal Discrimination

Today I read Arun Jaitley's article on

"Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill - 2011, and I couldn't agree more that this bill(drafted by National advisory council) may look like a bill to stop communal atrocities but its actual objective & motive is to achieve political goals and ignite communal riots. Format of this bill has put a questionmark on the intentions of those who drafted and those who cleared this bill(chairperson of NAC is Sonia Gandhi),although I hope it does not, but if this bill gets passed in its present state and becomes a law then I am pretty much sure that its adverse effects will widen the gap between existing communities in our nation and this bill will affect communal harmony and will create serious differences between majority community and minority community and will act as catalyst in widening the gap between existing communities. Most controversial and debatable aspect of this bill is its definition of "group", which stands for only linguistic and religious minorities and people of linguistic and religious majorities(i.e Hindus) are not included in the term "group", and in the case of communal violence this bill will empower central governments to impose president's rule in the affected state.

This draft bill preconsiders that members of majority community are belligerent and this draft bill treats them as criminals, I firmly believe cases of communal atrocities must be dealt unbiasedly, but this bill says communal atrocities can be committed only by the members of majority community not by the members of minority community, so does that means members of minority community can never commit any communal atrocity? I don't understand what is the logic behind this point, but according to this point communal atrocities committed by majority community against minority community is punishable offence in this law, but same communal atrocities committed by minority community against majority community is not punishable offence in this law, now isn't it communal discrimination ? why different yard sticks for people of different communities?

This bill clearly states member of majority community can never be the victim of communal atrocities, this clearly reveals dual standards of this bill.

 Now to enforce this absurd law this draft says there will be a national authority of seven members and out of these seven members four of them (including chairman and vice chairman) will be from minority community and similar authority will be formed on state level as well, which means membership of this authority will be on the basis of religion and caste, which is again communal discrimination, and according to this law the offenders will always be from majority community and justice will be delivered by members of minority community (so there is high probability that delivered justice will be biased), In case of complain these authorities will have right to raid and investigate, and these authorities will also be capable of making recommendations from governments, and these authorities will also have power of issuing advisories to central and state government.

Procedures to be followed during investigation under this bill are also controversial and debatable like

• Name, identity and address of a complainant will not be disclosed that means accused will never know who filed the complaint against him.
• Complainant can register his/her complain while sitting at home
• Statements of the victims will be recorded only in front of court.
• Government will have power to intercept and block messages and telecommunications under this law
• If there is an allegation against a person of committing communal atrocities then he would be considered guilty until he is proven innocent, which means merely an allegation is considered a proof.
•  Public servants can be tried under this bill without seeking permission from government 
• This bill enables central government to impose president's rule in state in the case of communal-riots.

If this bill is passed and enforced in its current state then it will be widely misused against the people of majority community because of its duplicity, members of minority community may use this law and register fake cases against anyone from majority community alleging them of spreading hatred, attacking them, conspiring against them, and the person against whom such case is registered will not even know who filed it against him. 

As there are several loop holes in this bill, people of minority community will derive unfair advantage of this bill because they will be well aware that no matter what they do they will not be charged under this act, and also extremists and jehadi's may take advantage of the loop holes of this bill and perform their act of terrorism and get away very easily due to the limitations of this bill, all these points shows that "Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill - 2011" is completely biased, and its not at all difficult to understand that this is clearly a communal discrimination on the basis of religion and caste, 

As now its crystal clear that motive of this bill is to create differences between majority and minority communities, there is also a possibility that members of NAC who drafted this bill were under the pressure of chairperson of NAC & Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and if this is so then its clear that congress is moving ahead with the British strategy of divide and rule to achieve its political goals, and according to me this trend is extremely lethal for our nation and Indian nationals, and if congress continues with this strategy then congress itself will become one of the biggest threat for our nation.