— Bad personnel policies — poor choice of officials and short tenures — lead to inadequate grasp of local conditions.

2. Administrative shortcomings

— The administration and the police fail to anticipate and read indicators which precipitated violence

— Even after the appearance of first signals, the administration and police are slow to react

—Field functionaries tend to seek and wait for instructions from superiors and tend to interfere in local matters undermining local initiative and authority

— The administration and police at times act in a partisan manner

— At times there is failure of leadership, even total abdication on the part of those entrusted with the maintenance of public order.

3. Post-riot management deficiencies

— Rehabilitation is often neglected, breeding resentment and residual anger

—Officials are not held to account for their failures, thus perpetuating incompetence.

There is need for further involvement of citizens in developing internal mechanisms for diffusing conflict situations. These include:

—Cooperation and coordination with the police (community policing).

—Cooperation and coordination with the administration (citizens’ committees).

The Commission also felt there are several existing provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which deal extensively with offences relating to religious, racial, linguistic or regional groups, castes and community but are rarely used. Thus, Section 153(A) of the IPC defines offences such as promoting enmity between communities on different grounds and prescribes punishments. In the same way, certain offences based on bias against religion, race, language or regional group, caste or community and which are prejudicial to national integration are dealt with in Section 153 B of the IPC. Further, Chapter XV of the IPC contains provisions regarding offences relating to religion. Briefly, these include:

... contd.