Communal violence Bill deeply flawed
There is just one reason why the Congress-led UPA Government is so determined to introduce the controversial Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill in the Winter Session of Parliament: It wants to exploit the minority vote-bank ahead of the lok Sabha election by making the minorities believe that the proposed legislation will protect them from communal attacks. Congress leaders have been claiming that the riots of Muzaffarnagar would not have happened had such a law been in place. This is silly. Everybody knows that the Muzaffarnagar violence took place because the Samajwadi Party regime in Uttar Pradesh behaved in a partisan manner and did not allow the police to act in accordance with the ground situation. Additionally, the Union Government washed its hand of the matter on the pretext that law and order was a State subject.
Even the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi happened because the Congress administration looked the other way while its goons went about systematically decimating Sikhs. It is difficult to imagine how a legislation of the kind that the Centre is hoping to bring, would have helped in those situations. Since Congress leaders refer ad nauseam to the Gujarat violence of 2002, they must remember that the investigation agencies and the prosecution have done their jobs commendably in the State, which is why the courts could hand out convictions in the case. It did not require an anti-communal violence legislation to achieve that.
When the Bill was first presented to the political parties a few months ago, the Bharatiya Janata Party and others such as AIADMK chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa had lodged vociferous protests. They had pointed to glaring anomalies in the proposed legislation relating to prejudice against a particular community and tamper of the federal scheme of things which the Constitution provides for. Congress leaders now claim that the Government has taken those objections into account and amended the Bill accordingly. But even before the revised Bill was circulated among political parties and Chief Ministers and discussed afresh, the UPA regime began pushing for its introduction in the coming Winter Session of Parliament.
Regardless of the tinkering that the Government has done to the original Bill, the larger intent of the Congress-led regime remains the same as before. It wants to use the proposed legislation to divide society and create communal discord. The Bill seeks to further muddy the waters by dragging in not just religion but also caste and language affiliations. The Congress-led Government's desperate attempt to legislate the lop-sided Bill is part of its larger gameplan to mislead the country's biggest minority community into believing that the former is its messiah. Remember, Prime Minister Manmohan had once remarked that the Muslims had the first right over natural resources, and certain Congress leaders had floated the unconstitutional idea of giving Muslims reservations in employment on the basis of religion. A senior Congress leader has claimed that people want the legislation. People certainly don't want a law that discriminates on the basis of religion and caste in matters of policing.