Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa has alerted her Uttar Pradesh counterpart Mayawati to the vagueness and anti-federal tilt in the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill,2011,which has been drafted by the National Advisory Council. In calling the attention of non-Congress chief ministers to the provisions of the bill,which she claimed was intended to bypass the powers of state governments and to give the Centre a means to impose on states in the name of checking violence,Jayalalithaa has kick-started an essential conversation in the political space,which has recently been seized by the anti-corruption campaign to the exclusion of all else. At the same time,the very act is a pointer to the federal nature of our polity and the need to have a sustained dialogue not just between the Centre and the states,but also among states. Many provisions of this bill have been contentious starting with the manner in which it assumes the victimhood of linguistic and religious minorities,and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Also problematic is the proposal to create a new riots bureaucracy with overarching powers to deal with matters related to communal violence a super-panel called the national authority for communal harmony,justice and reparation,and its variants in states. The bill,instead of making the present investigative machinery more accountable and thus becoming a comprehensive legal response to instances of communal violence,seeks to invest the panel a committee of morally upright elders with powers to intervene in a states law and order problems. The Centre,by its mandate to assign powers and rules to the authority,could have a tighter control over states. This mistrust of the state government is underscored at many levels: in the bills definition of making public servants legally liable for riots and by making breach of command responsibility,a term that can be liberally misused,a punishable offence. Its this aspect of the bill that has been red-flagged by Jayalalithaa. Now,its essential to take forward the debate on a bill as significant in its intention as this one on communal violence and at many levels.
