New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah will head a high level committee constituted to suggest measures to combat lynchings in the country, a senior Home Ministry official said.
The empowered Group of Ministers (GoM) was formed last year to suggest ways and legal framework to deal with incidents of mob violence and lynching effectively in different parts of the country.
"Since its formation, the GoM had met on two occasions but the renewed GoM is yet to meet. As the GoM was position-specific, there was no need for its reconstitution," said the government official, who requested anonymity.
Now, the new members of the GoM include, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Social Justice Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot.
On Friday, the Supreme Court had directed the Centre, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and state governments to respond to the allegation that it had not implemented a slew of directions issued last year to curb lynching and mob violence.
The GoM and the committee of secretaries were set up after around 40 people were lynched across nine states during last one year.
In July 2018, Union Home Ministry had issued advisories to states and and union territories following the apex court's directives to check lynching incidents.
In August, the inter-ministerial committee of secretaries, which was headed by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba submitted its report to the GoM, suggesting measures to curb increasing cases of mob lynching.
The commitee had also recommended that the country heads of the social media platforms like WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook be held accountable if they fail to comply with the directions of law enforcers. After this Centre held a series of meeting with social media officials to remove fake messages or those content that promote lynchings in the country.
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