New Delhi (Agency): India’s lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, agreed on a bill to abolish 76 outdated and unnecessary laws. The government says this decision is part of its ongoing efforts to make life and business easier in India.
So far, the current government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repealed 1,486 laws. Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said that the passage of this latest bill will increase the number of revoked laws to 1,562.
In December of last year, the government introduced the Repealing and Amending Bill to do away with 65 old laws. However, the bill did not come up for discussion in later sessions. Minister Meghwal announced an official amendment to include an additional 11 bills, raising the total to 76. The added laws were from the colonial-era.
Meghwal emphasized that this removal of old laws is part of the government’s efforts to improve “ease of living as well as ease of doing business”. He also took the opportunity to criticize the previous UPA government, claiming they did not repeal a single law that was no longer needed in today’s context.
The Repealing and Amending Bill not only eliminates outdated laws but also corrects “patent error” in one of the laws by substituting certain words. It is one of the periodic measures through which the government removes laws that have ceased to be in force or have become obsolete.
Among the laws proposed for repeal are the Land Acquisition (Mines) Act of 1885 and the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act of 1950. The latter makes unlawful possession of telegraph wires punishable by imprisonment or fine.
The bill also aims to do away with certain Appropriation Acts recently passed by Parliament. Once the primary Act is amended, the amendment laws become irrelevant. Keeping them as separate laws only complicates the legal system.
In section 31A of the Factoring Regulation Act, 2011, under the third schedule of the bill, the phrase “that Central Government” will be replaced with “that Government”. This replacement exemplifies the kind of changes that this bill seeks to implement to streamline India’s legal system.