Government Initiative Repeal Obsolete and Archival Laws

In a historical move, the Lok Sabha passed two Bills that facilitated the repeal of as many as 245 obsolete and archaic laws. The laws mainly include those that were merely aimed at furthering the colonial legacy in the country and do not serve any welfare purpose. A two-member panel chaired be R Ramanujan was set up to study and analyze the laws that need to be repealed in order to prevent the Indian legal system to become redundant. Further, the government has also taken steps to remove upto 1200 laws from the statute books.

Laws intended to be repealed:

Some of the laws sought to be repealed are:

• Calcutta Pilots Act, 1859
• Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act, 1911
• Hackney Carriages Act, 1879-it was intended to regulate and control hackney carriage, which are presently no longer in use.
• Dramatic Performance Act, 1876-Under this Act, the performances in the theatres could be regulated by the British government in order to control the rising anti-British propaganda and protests through the medium of theatres.
• Indian Sarais Act, 1867-it made it mandatory for all sarais to offer drinking water to individuals and also to their animals like the horses. They could use the washrooms free of cost.

Significance of this move

• This will make legal system more realistic. The obsolete laws were unwanted guests without the practical utility in 21^st
• Prevents harassments: There were laws like Indian Sarais Act, 1867 wherein any individual could ask for water free of charge from any hotel at any time for themselves and their pets. Furthermore, he or she could use the washroom for free. This was used by the police to demand extortions from hotels.
• Simplifying the complicated legal system of the country.
• Repealing of obsolete laws will result in increased ease of doing business.
• Reduced burden on the judiciary.
• These laws were demanding enforcement rather than compliance which is against the new motto of citizen friendly governance.
• Reduced burden on the executive as government of India is the large litigator amounting to almost 50% of cases in India.
• Reduction in litigation under these old laws.

Scope of Reform

Although the move has been very significant, there is more scope of action in this direction. One such area is simplifying some archaic laws. While some absolutely redundant ones have been removed, some have few provisions that can be regarded as redundant. One such area is the labour laws of India. Some provisions like the Factories Act providing for spittoons for workers in convenient places or places for keeping clothing and drying of wet clothing are of no special significance today. Similarly, the prevention of changing profiles of workers under the Industrial Disputes Act or the Contract Labour Act which prevents contractual work in core activities at a time when outsourcing of core activities has become common are also some measures that affect the laws. These pose a hurdle in the path of ‘ease of doing business’ and must also be looked into while repealing other laws.

But in general there would not be any significant impact on the legal system because these laws were obsolete. Hence there was less attention by the courts for their enforcement because the conditions which necessitated the laws didn’t exist today and they remained as statutory corpus in the law books.