New Delhi, Aug. 28: The National Advisory Council wants to tweak the name of a proposed law to tackle communal violence and add the word “sectarian” to widen its scope.

Sources said the panel, headed by Sonia Gandhi, wanted to rename the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2009, as Communal and Sectarian Violence Bill to take into account multiple identities like religion, caste, language and region.

If passed, the renamed bill will have far-reaching consequences. For instance, it will mean that violence against migrants, such as attacks on north Indians in Mumbai, and crimes by upper-caste members against Dalits would invite the same penalty as communal violence.

The council wants the ambit of the envisaged law to cover not just accepted forms of mob violence (arson, loot, assault and killings) but to enlarge its sweep to include sexual assault (apart from rape), enforced disappearances, torture, social and economic boycott and genocide.

Explaining the logic behind the move, the sources said that while administrative and law enforcement structures were trained to deal with spot violence, offences resulting from it, such as social and economic boycott, were seldom taken cognisance of.

Unless these offences are enshrined as crimes on the statute book, a council source said, victims would not be impelled to file complaints.

For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, while the law to prevent atrocities against Dalits has to an extent reduced offences such as rape and land-grab, it has not prevented subtler forms of abuse such as not allowing Dalit students to share social space with others or refusing to eat food cooked by Dalits.

The council is expected to discuss the “key guiding principles” bill on which the bill will be based and work out a draft when it meets here on August 30.

Among those involved in shaping the expanded blueprint were members Farah Naqvi and Harsh Mander — both worked closely with Gujarat riot victims — and a host of non-members like rights activists Teesta Setalvad and Maja Daruwala and lawyers Vrinda Grover and Gopal Subramanium.

To try and reshape the voluminous draft law into an effective instrument against communal violence, the council has also recommended other radical ideas. One calls for setting up an “independent national authority” to “ensure effective compliance with the law, without disturbing the federal structure”.

A senior government source, however, said it was the state’s job to maintain law and order and, if it failed, it should be made more accountable. The answer, the source added, was not handing over powers to civil society members.

Sources in the bureaucracy said the council was viewing the issue through the Gujarat prism. Some of the other “guiding principles” put up on the council’s website were:

Incorporate the doctrines of command and superior responsibility. In other words, pin criminal liability on a person, civilian, paramilitary or military, under whose command the crimes were committed

Make the Centre statutorily obliged to lay down national standards for resettlement, rescue, relief, compensation, reparation and recognising the rights of internally displaced persons instead of leaving it to state governments