The BJP on Tuesday lashed out at the UPA Government for trying to polarise the country on communal lines with its renewed effort to push through the revised ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill’.
leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley claimed the move comes despite the fact that so far there has not been adequate consultation with the stakeholders. “It appears that on the eve of the lok Sabha elections, in order to polarise the country on communal lines, the Ministry of Home Affairs has again written a letter to the State Governments enclosing therewith revised draft of the Bill,” Jaitley wrote in an article.
The BJP leader reiterated that the Bill was highly discriminatory since it discriminated against the majority and minority on basis of birth marks. It gave unguided power to authorities proposed to be created and loaded the redressal and accountability mechanism in favour of one community against the other on the basis of religion,” Jaitley wrote.
He reminded that the Bill proposed two years ago by the National Integration Council chaired by Sonia Gandhi was strongly opposed as ‘law and order’ and ‘public order’ are State subjects and enacting such a law in Parliament would be encroaching on the domain of States. He said various Chief Ministers in the meeting of National Integration Council in 2011 had also opposed the Bill on the ground that it would be destructive of the federal structure of the Constitution.
lauding Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, whom the BJP looks at as a potentially, for writing to the Prime Minister voicing her strong opposition to this draft Bill, Jaitley said by doing so she “has done well to initiate a public debate on this issue”. “Her views appear to be logical, reasonable and in consonance with the federal structure of the Constitution,” he said. The BJP leader said Jayalalithaa has mentioned that the provisions of this Bill were vague and could be subjected to serious abuse.
“She believes that the changes in the earlier Bill are cosmetic at the best and are highly objectionable. She reiterates that the words ‘hostile environment’ has been defined as ‘creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment’,” Jaitley said, adding that “This itself could be subjected to different interpretations”. He quoted Jayalalithaa as saying that Centre has been increasingly taking “ill-advised, counter-productive and unilateral approach” of attempting to create top-down structures and parallel authorities that encroach upon the constitutional domain of State Governments.