Sound legislation

Government must avoid making bad laws

In a development that has gone largely unnoticed, the Lok Sabha last week passed the Repealing and Amending (Fourth) Bill, 2015, which seeks to repeal as many as 295 laws that expert committees have found obsolete and redundant. The laws that will thus be off the statute book include those that were once passed to govern taxation, businesses and economic policies, but over time have outlived their utility rendering them irrelevant, anachronistic and even obstructive for doing business in the current economic environment. Many of these laws, such as the Indian Companies (Amendment) Act, 1936 or the Income-tax Law Amendment Act, 1940, have been superseded by subsequent legislation and thus their repeal would rid the legal system of avoidable clutter and possibly needless litigation. That such a Bill to repeal obsolete laws could be passed by the Lok Sabha even under the current situation of fractious and disruptive Parliamentary politics is a development that deserves to be welcomed unequivocally. It is to be hoped that the Rajya Sabha too will rise to the occasion and give its assent to what will certainly reduce many legal disputes.

To be sure, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has been quite determined, even though a bit slow, in weeding out obsolete laws from the statute book. Some time back, a two-member government committee had identified 1,741 obsolete central laws. In the past six months, 125 such laws have been repealed. With 295 more central Acts set to be repealed, a little less than a fourth of the task has been completed. Hopefully, India's Parliament and its members will eschew disruptive politics in the coming sessions and contribute to furthering the government's efforts in cleansing the legal system.

The problem with the statute book, however, is not just with obsolete or redundant laws. Over the last few years, Parliament has given its assent to a host of new laws that were not comprehensively thought through to prevent pitfalls. Worse, they were an unfortunate offshoot of the government's populist predilections and the Opposition parties' failure to resist such moves that in the end were patently harmful for the economy. The passing of the land acquisition and rehabilitation law in 2013 is one such example. If the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government erred in framing its many problematic provisions, even the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then in Opposition, made no significant effort to challenge them. Not surprisingly, the BJP, now in power, is facing the consequences of that law. The same can be said of other laws like the one to confer on the people the right to food. Without having addressed the legitimate concerns of poor targeting of beneficiaries of the scheme and of consequent leakages, the new food security law has had an adverse consequences for the government's finances. This law, framed by the UPA government, went unchallenged by the Opposition parties at that time. And now the NDA government has framed the black money law whose draconian provisions have dented investors' confidence and even made most taxpayers vulnerable to enquiries and action by a revenue department notorious for its coercive tax administration. Undoubtedly, its consequences too will be borne by the present and future governments. It is time the government as well as India's lawmakers learnt from the past mistakes of framing bad laws. Without any corrective steps, future governments will have to repeal not just obsolete but many bad laws as well.