Arun Jaitley slams Government on communal violence bill issue

New Delhi: Attacking the Government for bringing the communal violence bill ahead of Lok Sabha polls, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said it was 'highly discriminatory' and aimed at polarising the country on communal lines.

Jaitley, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, also lauded Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's opposition to the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill for being against the federal structure and for helping initiate a public debate on the draft bill.

"It appears that on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections, in order to polarize 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. There hasn't so far been adequate consultation with the stakeholders," he said in an article.

Jaitley said the Bill that was 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.

"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," he said.

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 Constitution.

Lauding Jayalalithaa, whom the BJP looks at as a potential ally, 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".

Quoting the Tamil Nadu CM, Jaitley said, the manner in which public servants also could be targeted under this Bill it may render their functioning almost impossible while trying to grapple with communally sensitive situations.

"The authorities sought to be empowered under the new draft could interfere in the functioning of the State Governments thereby undermining the relevance of the elected Governments," he said.

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.