'Domestic Violence Act may remain stagnant'

A successful implementation of this law remains a question mark, says a research scholar, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 27, 2006, 08:16:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Once the brouhaha over the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act gets over, the new law may remain a paper tiger like the Dowry Prohibition Act.

Years after the Dowry Prohibition Act was enforced only a very few prohibition officers have been appointed by the state governments.

According to Women and Child Development ministry official, the Dowry Act has failed to check the rising cases of dowry as the important enforcement mechanism in the law, the prohibition officers, have not been appointed.

"In their absence most police officers are not even aware about the dowry law," an official commented.

The same danger looms large over Domestic Violence Act. As per the rules notified, the onus of appointing protection officers lies with the state governments and the Centre has no role to play.

"We are not providing any sort of financial assistance to states to appoint protection officers. It is for them to decide whether they want to give some honorarium to the officers or not," a senior official said.

With the Centre’s involvement in enforcement of the law weak, the officials said the ball is now in the court of state governments.

"If they are willing they can enforce the law or they can allow it to remain on paper. They will have to spare money if they are serious about the new law," the official said.

In a bid to provide alternative to protection officers, the rules allow the service providers (NGOs) to forward a victim’s complaint to the magistrate.

"The magistrate will investigate and decide on the complaint," an official said. However, like protection officers the service providers will not have the state government’s accreditation. But the rules provide that they can take care and provide shelter to the victims.

To make finding protection officers an easier job, the government has allowed appointment of school teachers, women in Panchayati Raj bodies, district level officials or any other person as officers for enforcing the law.

So far, none of the state governments has informed the Centre of preparing a list of protection officers to enforce the Act. However, WCD officials are optimistic.

"Today is the first day. We should give some more time to the states to implement the law. We will call a meeting of state governments official as a follow-up action," an official said.

Responding to the HT report, Manisha Bhatia, a research scholar said, successful implementation of the law remains a question mark.

"Many women like me would want an assurance regarding the proper implementation of the Act. Sensitisation of police officers is not enough we need more stringent representatives to implement this Act," she said.

Another victim of domestic violence Sanchi Monga wanted that a time frame should be given to magistrates to decide on domestic violence cases.

Different women organisations have also demanded immediate appointment of protection officers, a key link for implementation of the law.

Centre for Social Research and All India Women Conference on Thursday demanded that the Centre should give money to construct more shelter homes for women, to launch a mass awareness campaign and to create confidence-building measures among the silent victims.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan@hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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