Govt likely to repeal 987 outdated laws

Modi government has put in motion a plan to repeal as many as 987 obsolete laws. The law ministry will bring a new bill in the winter session of Parliament to repeal 287 obsolete laws and junk about 700 Appropriation Acts that have lost relevance.

Updated on: Sep 30, 2014, 02:02:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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By his own admission, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “happiest” showing the door to laws that are of no use.

Accordingly, his government has put in motion a plan to repeal as many as 987 obsolete laws.

The law ministry will bring a new bill in the winter session of Parliament to repeal 287 obsolete laws and junk about 700 Appropriation Acts that have lost relevance.

An Appropriation Act is passed by Parliament during budget session to allow the government to withdraw money from the exchequer for a financial year. The law has no utility after the next budget when a new Appropriation Act gets passed.

But, all Appropriation Acts, including those passed decades ago, are still a part of statute books.

“We plan to bring a bill to repeal 287 obsolete laws,” law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters on Monday. He added they were consulting the finance ministry on the law commission’s recommendation to repeal 700 Appropriation Acts.

The ministry is examining the British system of junking Appropriation Acts after some years.

Many of the laws listed for repealing are from the British era and have lost relevance.

The government has made its plan known a day after Modi told Indian-Americans at Madison Square Garden, “Earlier Indian governments spoke of having made this law and that law, but I have started ending laws which are of no use. So many laws... If I end one law a day, I will be the happiest.”

Here are some laws that govt wants out:

Forfeited Deposits Act, Act 25 of 1850

Category: Land Laws

This Act was enacted for the forfeiture to the Government of deposits made on incomplete sales of land made under Regulation VIII, 1819 of the Bengal Code (the Bengal Patni Taluks Regulation, 1819).

Since tenure-holders or patnidars were taking fraudulent advantage of this Regulation, this Act was introduced to counter the situation. The Regulation allowed forfeited deposits at land sales to be applied as purchase-money.

The Act instead provided that forfeited deposits were to be used towards the cost of sales, and the rest to be forfeited to Government. This Act is of no relevance after 1947.

Foreign Recruiting Act, Act 4 of 1874

Category: International Relations

This Act empowered the Government to issue an order that prevented the recruitment of Indians by a foreign State.

The Act confers a wide discretion on the Government to specify the conditions under

which persons may be barred from being recruited by a foreign State. According to the Law Commission, in its 43rd Report on Offences against National Security (1971), such wide discretion might potentially violate the constitutional guarantee to freedom of occupation under Article 19.

The 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission Report of 2006 has also observed that this Act is outdated. This Act has been recommended for repeal by the PC Jain Commission in its Appendix A-1.

Elephants’ Preservation Act, Act 6 of 1879

Category: Environmental Law

The Act makes it an offence to kill, injure or capture wild elephants except in cases of self-defence, or in accordance with a licence granted under the Act.

However, the Act imposes only an insignificant fine of Rs 500 for its contravention, while a subsequent conviction attracts imprisonment for 6 months along with the fine.

The purpose of the Act is now subsumed by the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 which has similar provisions on the prohibition of killing wild animals and on 26 procedures for licensing.

Elephants are included within the ambit of the 1972 Act, which also has more stringent penalties. Therefore the 1879 Act is redundant.

For full list visit:

http://lawcommissionofindia.nic.in/reports/Report248.pdf

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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