BJP targets Sonia on Communal Violence Bill

NEWDELHI: Raising the pitch against the Communal Violence Bill, the BJP has targeted Congress president Sonia Gandhi, saying, this Bill carries her imprint, as it has been drafted by the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by her. Rejecting the Communal Violence Bill outright, as it is discriminatory; the saffron party has declared that it would carry out a nationwide campaign against it. The party is peeved that the Communal Violence Bill proposed by the NAC has been drafted by persons, who opposed TADA and POTA. They have no accountability and enjoy their clout for being the ‘eyes and ears’ of Sonia Gandhi. This Bill would be debated and the party would raise it in a big way across the country, BJP general secretary and chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said. “Prevention should not become worse than the disease,” was the reaction of Ravi Shankar Prasad. The party, he said, was particularly appalled by the discriminatory character of the Bill, which exclusively dealt with violence against minorities, virtually ruling out the possibility of minority violence against the majority. Prasad questioned Sonia, “Can the majority community become the victim of violence or not?” At this rate, Prasad feared that jehadis or the SIMI could easily foment communal trouble and get away with impunity, because they cannot be booked under the proposed law. The BJP leader cited Section 3C of the Communal Violence Bill, which says, “Communal and targeted violence means and includes any act or series of acts, whether spontaneous or planned, resulting in injury or harm to the person and or property, knowingly directed against any person by virtue of his or her membership of any group, which destroys the secular fabric of the nation.” Then, he went on to ask Sonia whether AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh’s visit to Azamgarh and mingling with the families of terrorists was helping the secular fabric. He askedwhether descriptions in certain quarters of the SIMI as cultural organisation also helped the secular fabric.