Opinion Statutory bloat
Laws should be retired precisely as they are made — routinely and continuously.
The government is moving purposefully to secure a declared objective of the prime minister: the identification and repeal of archaic laws that bloat up the statute books, occasionally conflict with other laws and may hinder governance and growth. Ministries had been asked to identify laws that could be nipped and tucked, and earlier this month, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that 36 superannuated laws had been targeted, but more would be identified for culling. Now, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the constitution of a review committee, which will preside over the slaughter of pointless acts.
Most of the flab in our legal tomes is touchingly quaint. For instance, 43 years after the abolition of privy purses, a law still requires police officers to appear bare-headed before royalty. The Indian Treasure Trove Act makes it criminal to fail to inform the district collector, in writing, of the discovery of “treasure” of value exceeding Rs 10. Another law caps tolls charged on cargoes on the Ganga, which was an important waterway a century ago. Dozens of laws were passed to deal with the fallout of Partition and are now irrelevant. There are laws regulating dead industries, like the Bengal Indigo Contracts Act. The Concurrent List duplicates legislation at the Central and state levels, which may not always be useful or even necessary. Clearly, there’s a lot of room for slash and burn.
The present government is carrying on a project inherited from the first NDA government, which had identified over 1,300 laws for removal. It is following a principle set by the Supreme Court in the matter of Article 377, which it, unfortunately, restored to the statute book: laws are ideally made and unmade by government, not the judiciary. However, sporadic commissions and initiatives would serve the purpose erratically. Lawmaking is the routine business of government, and review for possible repeal should also happen routinely. If a review system were in place, our statute books would be slimmer. And the courts would have been spared the burden of deciding the validity of Article 377, which it had to entertain only because legislatures have not reviewed it since it was passed in 1861.
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