Cops, officials may not obey superiors:?Jaya

Chennai: In a strongly worded op­p­o­sition from the state to the Centre’s proposal of introducing the Preven­ti­on of Communal Violence (Access to Justice and Re­partations) Bill 2013, chief minister Jayalali­th­aa sa­id that some of the provisions of the new ‘re­vised’ draft of the Bill seem to encourage government officials and police officers, in particular, to be insubordinate and mutinous by not obeying the orders of their superiors.

“Such an incitement will only lead to chaos and anarchy and a total breakdown of the law and order machinery. I strongly oppose such provisions,” Jayalalitha said.

Commenting on the idea of setting up separate national and state authorities for communal harmony in the new draft Bill, 2013, Jaya said that justice and reparation had been given up and instead  National Human Rights commission and State Human Rights Co­mmissions have been conferred the powers and functions  originally envi­saged for the national and state level authorities.

“Hence the commissions have been given un­fettered powers to interfere with the working of the state governments and its officials. Resp­on­si­bilities and powers of the National Human Rights Commission, State Hum­an Rights Commissions and similar bodies should be confined to policy iss­ues and not day-to-day monitoring of ‘build up of offences’ or hate propaganda,” she said.

The CM also pointed out that maintenance of law and order was the fundamental responsibility of state governments  and that it required functional cooperation and understanding between Centre and state and presupposed a relationship bas­ed on equality.

“However, the government of India has been taking a unilateral app­ro­ach in attempting to create top down structures and parallel authorities that encroach upon the constitution domain of state governments. This is further underscored by the shoddy manner in which the Bill has been drafted” she said.