Repeal 72 obsolete laws, recommends law panel

The Law Commission on Friday gave an interim report to the ministry of law and justice, recommending repeal of 72 of 261 laws it has identified as obsolete.

Many of those recommended for repeal date back to the colonial era. The oldest is the Bengal Districts Act of 1836. Other Acts so recommended include the Converts’ Marriage Dissolution Act of 1866, Ganges Tolls Act of 1867, Foreign Recruiting Act of 1874, Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act of 1911, Companies (Donation to National Funds) Act of 1951 and Land Acquisition (Amendment) Acts of 1962.

The Commission, in its interim report to Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, said it would further study the laws in question “with a view to providing a firm recommendation for repeal of obsolete statutes and those inconsonant with modern times”.

“The government is keen to repeal obsolete laws. Already, a Bill seeking to repeal 32 such Acts is pending in Parliament. We will take up the issue of repealing more such obsolete laws in right earnest in the next session,” Prasad said after receiving the report.

The interim report is part of a series on obsolete laws that the commission is likely to give in the next couple of months under its project titled ‘The legal enactments: Simplification and streamlining’. It will aim to recommend repeal of all laws that are obsolete, not relevant and inconsistent with modern and newer laws or with Supreme Court judgments and international conventions.

It has mapped all 1,086 existing central laws in 49 “carefully” demarcated subject categories. In addition, it has found that 253 laws the PC Jain commission recommended for repeal in 1998 continue to exist, and that 34 laws already repealed still feature on government websites, while certain laws passed by Parliament are not listed in the chronological list of central Acts.

The Commission's report says there are hundreds of Appropriation Acts whose purpose has been served and can safely be repealed. It has suggested all Appropriation Acts older than 10 years be dropped. These come to as many as 700. The Commission has noted that Australia has a built-in sunset clause for such laws.

The Commission also recommended a series of amendments to the Indian Succession Act, as it considered the present provisions unfair to Christian women and termed these also prejudicial to the status of women. Various Christian organisations have made similar recommendations on the issue.