Jaipur, Dec. 8 -- The Rajasthan government has framed the rules for the Honour of Dead Body Act, 2023 - two years after it was passed by the previous Congress government in its last assembly session. The home department issued the notification on Saturday night, saying, "In exercise of the powers conferred by section 24 of the Rajasthan Honour of Dead Body Act, 2023 (Act No. 21 of 2023), the State Government hereby makes the following rules, namely Rajasthan Honour of Dead Body Rules, 2025. They shall come into force on and from the date of their publication in the Official Gazette." The act aims to prohibit people from holding protests along with a family member's body and provides for a two-year jail term to punish violators. "For the purpose of the Act, following shall be the public authorities, namely:- (i) all Municipalities of the State; (ii) all panchayats of the State; and (iii) any other body specially authorized by the State Government, from time to time, to perform last rites of a dead body," read the order issued by Home Department. The magistrate may issue a notice to the family members to perform the last rites in 24 hours while the act gives police the power to take possession of a body if they have reason to believe that it would be used by an unlawful assembly or family members for remonstration. The act also mandated the hospitals and mortuaries to segregate the bodies based on their gender and maintain them with full dignity while hospital administrations shall also not retain any dead body on the ground of non-payment of bills. "Clothing of the deceased should be collected, examined as well as preserved and sealed by the doctor conducting the autopsy and should be sent for further examination at the concerned forensic science laboratory. The hospital administration should maintain confidentiality of clinical records and must have a mechanism for guarding information related to the deceased, especially for cases that are stigmatized or socially criticised," it read. It also added that the post mortem room should not come under the direct line of sight of the general public/visitors. The hospital authority may also be imprisoned for up to ten years if they fail to protect the confidentiality of any unclaimed body. To keep a record of unclaimed bodies, protection of genetic data information through DNA profiling and digitization and confidentiality of information have also been mandated in the act. "Provided that, the dead bodies stored in hospital may be disposed as per the provisions of section 15 of the Act, the Data Bank shall, after receipt of DNA analysis report, upload the general identification information on the web portal created under section 13 of the Act, so as to tally the above data with that of missing persons. Data Bank shall maintain a dataset of death cases for unidentified dead bodies on the web portal. This Web portal shall be monitored and maintained by the State Forensic Science Laboratory, Jaipur," it added. The Act was passed on July 20, 2023. The then BJP-led opposition opposed it, calling it "reminiscence of the emergency period". Although the then governor Kalraj Mishra approved the bill in August that year, the BJP, soon after coming to power in December 2023, decided to review the bill along with 59 other policies and schemes laid out by the Congress government....