Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi wrote letters to fellow Chief Ministers on Friday, urging them to oppose the Communal Violence Bill saying it was a blatant intrusion upon the powers of the state governments.
Modi had written to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the issue on Thursday, calling the legislation as "recipe for disaster".
The UPA government plans to introduce the 'Prevention of Communal Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2013' in the ongoing session of the Parliament.
In his letter, Modi has called upon his counterparts in other states to discuss the issue and oppose the Bill.
"It is important for all Chief Ministers to rise beyond political affiliations and come together to oppose the Bill, which is nothing but a blatant attempt by the Centre to interfere with and intrude upon the powers of elected State Governments," Modi has said.
The Bill would polarise the society and would introduce the idea of differential application of criminal law to citizens based on religious and linguistic identities, he has said, adding that it would demoralise public savants and impact how the state government can deal with law and order situations in future.
The recipients of the letter include Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Prithviraj Chavan (Maharashtra), Okram Ibobi Singh (Manipur) and Dr Mukul Sangma (Meghalaya) among others, officials said.
Next: Chouhan also writes to PM, slams Communal Violence Bill
Chouhan also writes to PM, slams Communal Violence Bill
Bhopal: After Narendra Modi, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan too has written to the Prime Minister, expressing strong reservations about the Prevention of Communal Violence Bill.
"I am constrained to say at the outset that the Bill not only attempts to abrogate and usurp the legislative powers of the state governments as guaranteed by our Constitution, but also tries to trample upon the basic tenets of criminal jurisprudence," Chouhan said in a letter to Manmohan Singh on Friday.
Certain provisions seem to be based on a dangerous assumption that the law enforcing functionaries and other instrumentalities of the state are automatically colluders in the perpetuation of communal violence, he said.
Of late the Centre was framing laws on the state subjects, the letter said, citing the example of 'The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act of 2013'.
"If this trend continues it will seriously undermine the principle of federalism which is a basic pillar of the Constitution and is sacrosanct and inviolable. The Constitution of India puts public order in the state list," the Chief Minister said.
Terming the Bill as "regressive, vague and runs counter to the spirit of the Constitution of India," Chouhan said in the letter: "We are fully committed to stamping out communal violence, but we do not feel that this Bill is designed to achieve this objective, and would in fact create more difficulties that it would serve."
Modi, in his letter to the Prime Minister on Thursday, had called the bill "a recipe for disaster".
