The Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955

The statute Parliament made under article 17, offence by offence, and the reason it did not work.

In the wording a student can write in an exam, taking the offences in turn.

Section 3 of the Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955 punishes preventing a person, on the ground of "untouchability", from entering a place of public worship or from worshipping there, or from bathing in or using the waters of a sacred tank, well, spring, water-course, river or lake, or bathing at any ghat.

Section 4 punishes enforcing, on that ground, a disability regarding access to a shop, public restaurant, hotel or place of public entertainment; the use of utensils kept for the general public; the practice of a profession, occupation, trade, business or employment in any job; and the use of a river, well, tank, water-tap, bathing ghat, burial or cremation ground, sanitary convenience, road or any other place of public resort.

Section 5 punishes refusing admission to a hospital, dispensary, educational institution or hostel, or discriminating after admission. Section 6 punishes refusing to sell goods or render a service on the same terms as to others. Section 7 punishes preventing a person from exercising a right accruing from the abolition of untouchability, molesting, injuring, annoying, obstructing or boycotting a person for having exercised such a right, and inciting the practice of untouchability. Section 7A deems it a practice of untouchability to compel a person, on that ground, to do scavenging or sweeping, to remove a carcass, to flay an animal or to remove the umbilical cord, and the Explanation says compulsion includes a threat of social or economic boycott.

Each of sections 3 to 6 carries not less than one month and not more than six months and a fine of not less than one hundred and not more than five hundred rupees; section 7A carries three to six months and the same fine.

The machinery around the offences

Section 8 allows the court that convicts under section 6 to cancel or suspend a licence held in relation to the profession, trade or employment concerned. Section 9 allows the Government to suspend or resume a grant of land or money made to a place of public worship, educational institution or hostel whose manager or trustee is convicted.

Section 10 punishes abetment with the punishment for the offence, and its Explanation is the provision to remember: a public servant who wilfully neglects the investigation of an offence under this Act is deemed to have abetted it.

Section 11 raises the penalty on repetition: six months to one year for a second offence, and one to two years for a third or subsequent one.