Walls within walls

Unlike in other states,where the Home Department is the implementing authority,in Gujarat it is the Revenue Department.

State Revenue Minister Anandi Patel,who will introduce a Bill seeking to amend the Act in the Assembly on July 28,says the law is necessary for two reasons,It helps prevent distress selling and also prevent ghettoisation.

But opponents say the law does not really work as it,so far,has been enforced only in Ahmedabad and even there it has not been able to stop ghettos from coming up.

In Ahmedabad,26 out of 35 police stations have 274 declared disturbed areas. Leading the list is the Gaekwad police station with 34 disturbed areas and Shahpur police station whose entire jurisdiction has been declared as a disturbed area.

What surprises many is the fact that the Act continues to be in force only in Ahmedabad despite the fact that other major cities and towns like Vadodara and Surat have also seen communal clashes periodically. The law was not enforced in other parts of the state even after the 2002 riots,which affected large parts of central and north Gujarat,including parts of Saurashtra.

If the Act is being implemented in Ahmedabad to check the distress sale of properties and prevent migration leading to the ghettos in the city,why is the law not being enforced in other cities and towns that face the same problems? asks a senior BJP MLA,who does not want to be named. The government should either scrap the Act or implement it effectively in other parts of the state too.

When asked why the law was being implemented only in Ahmedabad city,Revenue Minister Patel told The Indian Express that her department was studying the situation and could think of extending it to other cities which are prone to communal disturbances.

Even in Ahmedabad,the law has been far from effective. While Juhapura area has developed as one of the largest Muslim ghettos in the city,there is also an upwardly mobile Dalit ghetto in Ranip area,which developed after anti-reservation/Dalit riots in Ahmedabad in the mid-80s.

In many cases,transactions in real estate continue in the sensitive areas,where families of one community move out of the neighbourhood,mostly uncomfortable with another communitys large presence. They even sell their properties at throwaway rates. To circumvent the law,many officially show that they have either rented out or given power of attorney.

Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee vice-president Juvan Momin says that barring the 2002 communal riots,no communal disturbances have been reported since 1991 from the Ahmedabad areas that were declared as disturbed two decades ago. Hence,there is no need of such an Act,which the government should scrap,leave alone amend it, he says.

Momin also questions why mutual deals to sell/buy houses in the disturbed areas of Ahmedabad between Hindus and Muslims should be frowned upon. Certain provisions of the Act amount to violation of the Constitutional rights of members of both communities,for it prohibits them from selling or buying their properties to each other, he says.

He has another point: the state government loses crores of rupees as stamp duty revenue as there is no stopping the deals.