New Delhi, December 5, 2009. A highly-anticipated and significant legislation that checks communal violence across the country was Thursday approved in a Union Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The Communal violence (prevention, control and rehabilitation of victims) Bill, drafted in the year 2005, was passed in the cabinet meeting. The revised Bill may be tabled in Parliament’s ongoing session. It seeks to arm the Centre with wideranging powers to intervene in states in cases of communal violence.

The bill assumes significance against the backdrop of a string of communal violences against Christians and other religious minorities.

In October, the Church had studied the bill and came up with certain amends and additions with the help of senior advocates like Shanti Bhushan. During that deliberation, Archbishop Stanislaus of the CBCI stressed the urgency of enacting the bill to counter rising fundamentalism. He urged that the bill apart from controlling of violence and rehabilitation of victims, must strive to prevent such occurrences in the future.

The government apparently has taken a serious approach to the bill after the recent Liberhan Commission report on the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition, which indicted several Sangh Parivar leaders.

Despite strong objections from several state governments, the new Bill continues to have Clause 55, which empowers the Centre to intervene to tackle communal violence without the concurrence of the state government, if it believes that the state is not doing enough to control the violence. The Bill also empowers the Centre to declare any area in any state ‘communally disturbed’, if it is convinced that the state government is not following its directions to control or check communal violence. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) opposed the bill and termed it "serious encroachment" on the federal structure of the country.

Strongly reacting to this, Law Minister M Veerappa Moily questioned, "What happens when incidents like those that happened in Orissa, Gujarat and Karnataka take place? The nation had to be a mute spectator. Sometimes, the party in power becomes party in what is happening,” he said. “This bill, when passed into law, will help us act at a micro level. It will give an alternative other than merely sending advisories."

The bill, apart from helping the government declaring an area in a state as communally disturbed, will also empower it to send central security forces without the state's request. In addition, it will support the transfer of cases outside the state concerned for trial and take steps to protect witnesses.