Obsolete laws: Cabinet clears amendments made to two bills

A law which the government now does not want to scrap and another which has already been repealed are set to be removed from two bills which seek to abrogate obsolete legislations. The two bills -- Appropriation Acts Repeal Bill, 2015 and the Repealing and Amending (Third) Bill, 2015 -- are pending in the Rajya Sabha after being approved by the Lok Sabha.

The official amendments to the two bills to remove the Pensions' Act and the Punjab Appropriation Act from the list of laws which government wants to repeal was on Wednesday cleared by the Union Cabinet.

A senior functionary said there has been a reconsideration and now the government does not favour repealing the Pension Act, 1871. The Punjab Appropriation Act has already been repealed and "inadvertently" became part of the Appropriation (Acts) Repeal Bill, 2015, he said.  "With the official amendments cleared, we will now push for the passage of the two bills in the Rajya Sabha," he said.

The two bills will return to the Lok Sabha for fresh approval after the official amendments. The bills seek to scrap a total of 1,053 Acts which have become redundant and are clogging the statute books.