Women organisations in Uttar Pradesh are up in arms against the ordinance on the criminal law amendments related to sexual violence and have urged the President not to sign such and ordinance.
Talking to reporters here on Saturday, National Advisory Council member Farah Naqvi said, “We are alarmed at the complete lack of transparency displayed by the government on the issue. They are behaving as if it is an emergency measure. We fail to understand what objective and purpose will be served by such a hasty non-transparent measure since the proposed law will not be retrospectively applying to the Delhi gangrape case.”
A statement jointly released by around two dozen organisations across the state has demanded transparency and due process in lawmaking. They have also demanded that the parliamentary process, including the standing committee process be upheld, for this is the place where concerned citizens of the country, have the right to be heard.
“An ordinance like this, implemented by stealth, only serves to weaken our democracy,” the statement said.
Ms Arundhati Dhuru, spokesperson of the National Alliance for Peoples Movement, said that an ordinance like this betrays the trust of scores of Indian men and women, who marched the streets of Lucknow and other cities demanding an end to impunity for sexual violence.
“Women’s organisations are shocked to learn that the JVC report has not been considered fully or even partially, neither in letter nor in spirit in the content of this ordinance. We are told that virtually all the recommendations that activists had hailed as signs of a paradigm shift in understanding violence against women have been dropped,” she pointed out.
Among the recommendation of the JVC not considered by the ordinance are recognition in law of marital rape, new provisions on the offence of breach of command responsibility, non-requirement of sanction for prosecuting a member of the security forces accused of sexual assault and rape, provision for trying them under ordinary criminal law for sexual crimes; and change in definition of consent to any sexual act.