Past continuous

Consider this. We have 6 Central statutes from 1830s, 9 from 1840s, 34 from 1850s, 21 from 1860s, 33 from 1870s, 37 from 1880s and 34 from 1890s on our statute books

There is a 1944 Chicago Convention that governs international air travel through the International Civil Aviation Organisation ICAO. Article 20 of the Chicago Convention requires aircraft to be registered with a national aviation authority and the resultant registration number must be displayed near the tail of the aircraft. The first part of this registration number, the prefix, determines nationality of registration and because this prefix covers not just aircraft registration but also radio and television broadcasting, the country code is allotted by the International Telecommunication Union ITU. India8217;s country code happens to be VT and despite traveling frequently, we may not even notice this or realise that VT stands for 8216;Viscount8217;s Territory8217;. Some people say 8216;Victoria8217;s Territory8217;, but this is unlikely since Queen Victoria died in 1901. It is a colonial legacy we can well do without. Throughout the Commonwealth, including South Asia, countries have moved away from colonial legacies, Australia and Canada being exceptions.

What is bizarre is that we have to wait till the 60th year of Independence for this colonial legacy to change. Let me give you a quote. 8220;There are thousands of laws, Central and Provincial in operation, including the Regulations passed by the British Government. All these have to continue in operation. Is it possible for ordinary Members, I ask, to undertake the private legislation to modify all these? What has been done by the Ministry of Law? I plead again with the Drafting Committee that the position they have taken so far, as also the action taken by the Law Ministry so far in this regard has not been helpful8230; The British Government, before any adaptations were undertaken asked the Government of India and the Law Department of the Government of India to examine all the necessary Statutes. The Government of India were suggesting adaptations and the adaptations suggested by the Law Ministry, then, the Law Department of the Government of India, were being approved and published as the adaptations of the British Government in an Order-in-Council. My complaint in this regard is that neither the Law Department nor the office of the Constituent Assembly have moved an inch in this regard. I expect that they should have kept ready the adaptations and examined the laws in operation.8221; That was Biswanath Das in the Constituent Assembly debates on October 10, 1949.

One would have expected that once the Constitution came into force, colonial legacies in laws and other policies would have been excised through systematic scrutiny. Yet, references to the Privy Council continued till 2001/2002. The two earliest Central statutes, still on our statute books, are the Bengal Indigo Contracts Act and the Bengal Districts Act. Take the Bengal Districts Act first, enacted on September 11, 1836. The operative part of this statute now is that it gives the government of West Bengal the power to create as many zilas districts as it wants. Does one need a Central statute to create districts and what is so special about West Bengal that this is the only state that seems to have such a law? However, the Bengal Bonded Warehouse Association Act of 1838 no doubt has continued relevance, because you never know when the East India Company might cause problems. Section 36 of this law states, 8220;If the said Association shall be desirous to dispose of any premises purchased by the said Association from the East India Company, the said East India Company shall have the right of pre-emption, and the price shall be fixed by two appraisers, the one named on the part of the said East India Company, and the other by the Directors of the said Association; and if the said appraisers shall not agree on a price, the price shall be fixed by an umpire named by the said appraisers.8221;

We still have 6 Central statutes from 1830s, 9 from 1840s, 34 from 1850s, 21 from 1860s, 33 from 1870s, 37 from 1880s and 34 from 1890s on our statute books. Many are irrelevant in their entirety. And several have irrelevant and dysfunctional sections.

We have two separate but related agendas. First, junk old statutes and dysfunctional sections within ones that can8217;t be entirely repealed. Second, junk colonial legacies. As Biswanath Das pointed out in 1949, these should have been 1950 agendas.

The solitary instance when something was done on this count was the report of the Jain Commission, which was a commission set up to examine India8217;s administrative law. But it drew up a list of around 1700 old laws and submitted a report in 2000. Based on this report, the law ministry, when Arun Jaitley was the law minister, repealed a little over 300 old statutes. And please don8217;t search for the report of the Jain Commission this is not the high-profile Jain Commission. It has disappeared from circulation it was never quite printed. It is because of such disinterest that we are stuck with anachronisms like VT. Should we try VM for 8216;Vande Mataram8217;? Better than 8216;Viscount8217;s Territory8217;.