Internally displaced persons in NAC draft

The Bill had come under severe attack from the main Opposition party,with BJP leader Arun Jaitley saying that the proposed law makes only members of the “majority community culpable”. The main objection surrounded the term “group”,which,as per the draft Bill proposes to cover “religious or linguistic minority” in any state. It was argued that a member of a majority community in a state does not fall within the purview of the ‘group’,so must be deleted.

The NAC has refused to modify it. Naqvi said,“The criticism is a deliberate misinterpretation.”

The Bill was also criticised for intruding into the domain of the state. However,that has been taken care of with the NAC deleting Section 20 of the draft Bill,which,critics said,gave “unreasonable” powers to the Centre.

Another significant amendment includes deletion of the phrase in Section 3(c) that says “…destroys the secular fabric of the nation”. “We agreed to delete this phrase from the definition of communal and targeted violence as it was realised that no riot or violence has in 63 years destroyed the secular fabric of the country,” said a member of the working group.

The amended Bill has stuck to new offences,which it had envisaged in the original draft,including sexual assault,enforced disappearances,torture,persecution,enforced migration.