SC paves way for church riot relief

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SAMANWAYA RAUTRAY

Supreme Court New Delhi, April 7: The Supreme Court today cleared the way for the church to help out Christians affected by rioting and arson in Orissa’s Khandhamal district in December last year, by staying an order passed by the district collector disallowing any charitable or religious NGOs from providing relief to them. “District collector’s order stayed…high court order upholding it stayed...,” a two-judge bencc comprising Justices H.K. Sema and Markandey Katju, said. The district collector had passed an order on January 11 directing that no charitable or religious NGOs be allowed to carry out any relief work in the affected areas. The order threatened action under the CrPC and IPC against those violating the directive. The archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, Raphael Cheenath, challenged the order in the Orissa High Court which refused to intervene. The collector defended his order before the high court on the ground that religious institutions and NGOs only carry out relief operations among a particular community which might create ill feeling among people of other communities disturbing peace and harmony. “The situation is already very delicate and any such instance may further lead to a flare-up in communal tension and in that situation it would be difficult for the administration to maintain peace and therefore he (the collector) had appealed to all religious institutions and NGOs not to carry out any relief operation in any particular community on their own,” the high court had said refusing to exercise its power of judicial review. The archbishop came to the apex court in appeal against the high court order. In his appeal, the archbishop stated that even though it was over three months since the outbreak of violence in the area, the state government was yet to announce any relief or rehabilitation package for the affected people. He said even in the few cases compensation had been paid, the maximum was a measly Rs 10,000 — which was inadequate and did not cover even a fraction of the losses suffered. Very few people had received even that compensation, he said. Only three relief camps had been set up so far, he claimed. “Out of these, two were closed. The condition in the remaining was awful without proper food, drinking water or medicines. Two persons had died in the relief camp on January 15 due to lack of medical attention,” Cheenath claimed. He alleged that he was prevented from distributing relief material mobilised from among the Christian community to the affected people as also to reconstruct churches and houses that were destroyed. “The attitude of the state government is most unreasonable in that it has not constructed a single house and has given compensation and a few blankets to a handful of victims only to make a pretence that some relief is being provided,” he said.