Another Promise Being Kept

By the UPA. Details from IE

In the name of ‘‘suppressing’’ communal violence, the UPA Government has drafted a controversial Bill that not only gives the Centre unprecedented powers over states but also equips the armed forces with draconian powers of arrest, search and seizure. It calls for special courts to try cases and arms them with the power to order externment of people ‘‘likely to commit a scheduled offence.’’
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According to the preamble to the Communal Violence (Suppression) Bill 2005—a promise made by the UPA in its Common Minimum Programme—the Bill is in exercise of the constitutional ‘‘duty of the Union to protect States against external aggression and internal disturbance.’’

However, it turns established constitutional principle on its head by allowing the Centre to ‘‘prevail’’ over the state in declaring any area as ‘‘communally disturbed.’’

Will it work?

It is obviously a response to the Gujarat episode. So would it have helped if the bill was in place then? Let's see. A PM unable even to criticize the CM of the state where it all happened beyond asking him to maintain raj dharma and then taking all the sting out of it the next day. No one in the CM's party - also the party ruling at the centre along with sundry others - seeing it fit to issue a firm criticism as far as I can recollect. These people using the provisions of the bill to declare parts of Gujarat 'communally disturbed', restoring order and trying the guilty in special courts? Very unlikely.

And what would happen if, say, the whole thing happened in Gujarat now? Can you imagine the scale of the political mess that would then ensue? Would decisions take place fast enough to actually help the affected people? I don't think so.

And see this:

... Clause 7 to Clause 10 ... reads like a virtual reprint of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, an act which, ironically, the Centre—after the Manipur protests—has committed to reviewing.

Will sense prevail and the bill be buried?