In his reply, the representative of the State party explained that although there were religious and linguistic minorities in India, the Indian people formed a composite whole racially, and hence the concept of ethnic minorities and ethnic majority did not apply. All human and fundamental rights and mechanisms for redress were equally available to minorities, which also enjoyed a specific constitutional right to establish and administer educational institutions. The Minorities Commission had been set up in 1978 to safeguard the interests of minorities and to review the implementation of constitutional safeguards for different minority groups. In addition, a Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities had been appointed and a Minorities Cell had been set up. The Minorities Cell ensured fuller participation by minorities in all aspects of national life, through coordinating and monitoring the implementation of a 15-point programme aimed, inter U, at preventing communal violence, promoting communal harmony and giving minorities special consideration in recruitment to services such as the stats and central police forces. 301. 306. Members of the Committee expressed their thanks to the representatives of the State party for their cooperation in presenting the second periodic report of India and for having engaged in a fruitful and constructive dialogue with the Committee. Although the report had been drafted in conformity with the Committee’s guidelines regarding the form and contents of reports from States parties under article 40 of the Covenant, it failed to refer to practice and the specific implementation of legislative provisions and, in that respect, was deficient. Satisfaction was expressed over the improvements that had occurred since the consideration of the initial report of India, including, in particular, the legislation recently enacted to prohibit the practice of eati, the measures taken to prevent “dowry deaths”, the efforts made on behalf of the scheduled castes and tribes, the role of the Supreme Court in upholding provisions of the Covenant that were not contained in the Indian Constitution, and the new provisions on lsgal aid. 309. At the same time, the consideration of the second periodic report had also highlighted some of the difficulties India had faced in implementing the Covenant, partly as a rasult of the country’s size, economic problems and demographic composition, and the concerns expressed by members of the Committee had not been entirely allayed. Furthermore, the reservations entered by the Government and the fact that the provisions of the Covenant had not been fully incorporated in the Constitution tended to make it difficult to identify clearly the extent to which the Covenant was actually implemented in India. In that connection, members pointed out that rights, other than those limited by a specific limitation clause in the Covenant, could only be restricted by means of a formal derogation under article 4 of the Covenant: and that several provisions of the Armed Forces (§pecial Powers) Act, the National Security (Amendment) Act, and the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act seemed to be incompatible with articles 6, 9 and 14 of the Covenant. 310. Concerns were also expressed with respect to a number of issues such as the implementation of the Covenant in “disturbed” areas; arbitrary killings and arrests in fiome statest police excesses and the mistreatment of detainees) the failure to bring proceedings against police offenders: the system of -76-