The Madhya Pradesh Assembly on Thursday passed a bill that provides for recovery of losses from people and organisations responsible for damaging public and private property during protests.

The Assembly passed the Madhya Pradesh Damage to Public and Private Property Recovery Bill, 2021, without any debate and amid a walkout by the Opposition Congress that complained that its leader Kamal Nath did not get a chance to speak on a resolution on OBC reservation that was passed in the House earlier.

If the governor gives assent to the bill, Madhya Pradesh will become the third BJP-ruled state after Uttar Pradesh and Haryana to have such a law.

Legislative affairs minister Narottam Mishra presented the bill in the Assembly but due to the protest by the Opposition, it was cleared by a voice vote without any debate. Talking to reporters outside the House after the proceedings, Mishra said: “The bill has been passed.”

The bill provides for recovery of losses from people and organisations responsible for damaging public and private property during protests.

According to the bill, once the prosecution succeeds during the trial to prove that public property had been damaged in direct action by an organisation in which the accused also participated, a court can draw a presumption that the accused is guilty of destroying public property too.

The onus of proving innocence will be on the accused from this stage of the trial. It will be open for the accused to rebut such a presumption.

Abetment of offence shall carry the same penalty as the main offence, the bill said.

A cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had cleared the bill on December 16.

The bill focuses on those indulging in communal riots, hartals (general strikes) and protests and those who take out rallies during which property is damaged. Such accused persons will be tried before criminal tribunals, Mishra had said earlier.

Under the Uttar Pradesh law, claim tribunals set up under the Act are supposed to decide matters in a year, while the Madhya Pradesh bill proposes a time period of three months, an official said.

The bill also proposes a provision that “specifies categories” of leaders of the organisation that gave the call for direct action resulting in damage to public property, and who shall be deemed guilty of abetment.

At the same time, no innocent person, in spite of being a leader of the organisation, shall be made to suffer for the actions of others, the bill says.

The principles of absolute liability shall apply once the nexus with the event that precipitated the damage is established, the bill states. The liability will be borne by the actual perpetrators of the crime as well as the organisers of the event.

“Exemplary damages” may be awarded to an extent not greater than twice the amount of the damages liable to be paid, the bill said.

The Uttar Pradesh Recovery of Damages to Public and Private Property Act, 2020, was passed by the Assembly in March 2021. The ordinance had been issued in the midst of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

In May 2021, the BJP government in Haryana enacted the Haryana Recovery of Damages to Property During Disturbance to Public Order Act.

In January this year, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Chouhan had said a law was needed to deal with incidents of stone-pelting after violence during processions taken out in the western part of the state to collect funds for the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

While the Vishva Hindu Parishad and other Right-wing organisations had alleged that stones were hurled during the processions, Muslims had claimed that their places of worship and houses had been targeted during these events.