New Delhi, April 12: As many as 422 archaic laws, most of them pertaining to Home Ministry, are likely to be repealed with the Prime Minister’s Office keeping a close eye on the entire process.
The archaic laws include Public Servants (Inquries) Act 1850, Convert’s Marriage Dissolution Act 1866, Marriage Validation Act 1892, Church of Scotland Kirk Sessions Act 1899, North Western Provinces Village and Road Police Act 1873 and Weekly Holidays Act 1942.
This is the first time since 2001 that such an exercise is being undertaken by the NDA government in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agenda to do away with archaic laws which are “hindering efficient governance”.
The Home Ministry is in constant communication with the Law Ministry for repealing these obsolete laws. The Coordination Division of the Home Ministry has sought the opinion of different wings of the Ministry on the proposed move to repeal the old laws.
“As the matter is urgent and also monitored by the PMO, comments on the Acts shown against your Division may be sent to Coordination Division by 18-04-2016,” an office memorandum said.
A two-member committee chaired by R Ramanujan in the Prime Minister’s Office was also constituted in September, 2014 for the review of repeal of obsolete laws. The committee had identified a total number of 1,741 Acts for repeal. Between 1950 and 2001, over 100 Acts were repealed.
The Law Commission had in its four separate reports on obsolete laws recommended repeal of 72, 113, 74 and 30 obsolete Acts, respectively.
The government had to face an embarrassment in July 2015 when it had to withdraw from the Lok Sabha a bill which sought to repeal archaic laws, some of which were already repealed through a previous version of the same bill, to avoid the duplicity. It is now set to introduce a revised bill.
