Thaindian News

New Delhi, April 28 (IANS) The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) Thursday decided to put its long-awaited draft Communal Violence Bill - with a wider ambit of vulnerable sections of the society - in the public domain and discuss it again after assessing the people’s views, a statement said Thursday.

“Based on the feedback received, the working group of NAC shall review the draft Bill and place the final version for consideration before the NAC at its next meeting,” the release said after a NAC meeting, which was presided over by Gandhi.

The draft has been titled Draft ‘Prevention of Communal and Targetted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011′.

The draft Bill aims to protect and provide relief to not just victims of communal riots, but also tribals, Dalits and linguistic minorities - any community that is in a minority in a particular region. The Bill has taken into account the recent pattern of attacks in Maharashtra and some other regions on migrant workers from outside the states, a legal analyst told IANS.

Farah Naqvi, convener of the NAC working group, presented the draft Bill at the meeting, which was attended by most of the members, the release added.

“The Constitution recognizes that vulnerable groups, defined in Article 15(1) require protection against discrimination on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them. The said Article recognizes that the groups mentioned above have been vulnerable to historical and contemporary forms of discrimination and hence need to be protected,” the release said.

“Accountability of public officials is at the heart of this Bill,” it added.

“Failure of command responsibility has been made an offence to ensure accountability at the highest level,” the release said. “The offence of breach of command responsibility is extended to non-state actors also,” it added.

“A major stumbling block in prosecuting public servants is the provision for getting sanction under S.196 and 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure,” the NAC said.

- The Bill provides that if such sanction is not granted 30 days from the date of application to the state government, sanction to prosecute will be deemed to be granted.

- The draft Bill also provides for constitution of a national authority and state authorities as the primary monitoring and grievance redressal mechanisms.

“The principle behind this is not to supersede the existing law enforcement machinery, nor to disempower or paralyze the existing administrative and justice mechanisms, but rather to strengthen them and make them more accountable,” the draft Bill says.

Certain new offences - sexual assault, enforced disappearances, torture, persecution, and enforced migration - have been defined as offences under the Draft Bill.

“Additionally, mass violence that is widespread or systematic in nature is also defined specifically as ‘organized’ communal and targeted violence,” the release said.

- The NAC draft Bill also seeks to “strengthen the rights of the victim, through a series of new provisions - from the simple right to information at all stages, the right to get copies of all their statements, to the right to be heard in a court,” the release said.