Religious freedom in India has improved a lot in the past one year but attacks on religious minorities have continued, the U S State Department said in a report to Congress.
The annual report on International Religious Freedom said while the government took steps to prevent attacks and bring about justice, violence against minorities persisted.
It, however, absolved the central government of any abuses of religious freedom, saying that human rights activists had criticised it for ''indifference and inaction in the face of violence committed by state and local authorities as well as private citizens.'' The report said the Indian legal system has many years of backlog with all but the most prominent cases moving slowly. In such a scenario, enforcement of laws protecting religious freedom was weak.
''Official failure to deal adequately with intra-group and inter-group conflict and with local disturbances in some places have abridged the right to religious freedom,'' the report added.
The central government's failure was partially due to the legal constraints inherent in the country's federal structure, and from shortcomings in the law enforcement and justice systems, the report said.
The Indian federal political system in which state governments hold jurisdiction over law and order contributed to the government's ineffectiveness in combating religion-based violence, it added.
The country's only national law enforcement agency, the CBI, is required to seek state government permission before investigating a crime in the affected state. States often delay or refuse to grant such permission, the report said.
''Ineffective investigation and prosecution of attacks on religious minorities were seen by some extremists as a signal that such violence may be committed with impunity,'' it said.
The report said there were no new anti-conversion laws and Tamil Nadu had recently announced its decision to repeal its anti-conversion law.
The Gujarat police conducted no illegal surveys of Christians and no tridents (trishuls) were distributed in any state during the period covered by the report, it added.