Parliament passes bill to repeal 76 'redundant and obsolete' laws

Lok Sabha on Wednesday gave its nod to a bill to repeal 76 "redundant and obsolete" laws, with the government saying the move is part of its continuing efforts to improve the ease of living and doing business.

So far, the Modi government has repealed 1,486 laws, and once the present bill gets Parliament's nod, the number of laws removed from statute books will go up to 1,562, law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said, moving the bill for consideration.

In December last year, the government introduced the Repealing and Amending Bill to cull 65 old laws. But the bill could not come up for discussion in subsequent sessions. Meghwal said he is moving an official amendment to add 11 more bills to the list, bringing the total to 76.

The 11 bills added through the amendment are "colonial-era laws", he said, adding that the repealing of old laws is part of the government's efforts to improve "ease of living as well as ease of doing business".

In his brief remarks, the minister took a jibe at the previous UPA government, saying not even a single law, which is not required in the current scenario, was repealed.

The repealing and amending bill also aims to correct a “patent error” in one of the laws by replacing certain words.

The bill is one of the periodical measures by which enactments that have ceased to be in force or have become obsolete or the retention as a separate Act is unnecessary are repealed. Such bills also correct defects detected in any law.

The bill proposes to repeal the Land Acquisition (Mines) Act, 1885. It also seeks to repeal the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act, 1950. Under the law, “Whoever is found or is proved to have been in possession of any quantity of telegraph wires shall unless he proves that the telegraph wires came into his possession lawfully, be punishable, for the first offence, with imprisonment for a term which may extend to five years, or with fine…. ” The bill also seeks to repeal certain Appropriation Acts passed by Parliament in the recent past.

Once the principal act is amended, the amendment laws lose relevance. Their presence in the statute books as independent laws becomes unnecessary and they only clog the system.

According to the third schedule of the bill, in section 31A, in sub-section (3), for the words “that central government”, the words “that government” will be substituted in The Factoring Regulation Act, 2011.