Nagpur, Oct 03: National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has asked the union government to look into its demand for enabling it to have an investigation agency on par with that of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). NCM chairman Tarlochan Singh told reporters here yesterday that the body has sent representations to the Prime Minister, Law Minister and Lok Sabha Speaker in this regard. "NCM is in need of an investigating agency at par with NHRC to independently carry on investigations as it had done in Gujarat after last year's communal clashes", Singh said adding that NHRC has been empowered to conduct a special inquiry on its own with a DG police level officer. Singh also said he favoured setting up of special courts in the country with a time-frame to deal with cases of communal riots and atrocities on minorities. Meanwhile, he expressed "happiness and relief over the dialogue process between the church leaders and RSS in the past", and said "church-RSS meetings have proved fruitful".
"A similar effort of NCM is presently on where prominent Muslim organisations and Hindu religious leaders are brought on a common platform to sort out burning issues", he said.
"But the problems with Muslims in the country is that no individual or an organisation can solely take the decision since other groups do not recognise them as authorised ones", he added.
"Fortunately this is not the case with Christians, as the two organisations, Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) and the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) represent the entire Christians in the country", Singh, who was the press secretary to the then President Gyani Zail Singh, said.
Bureau Report