Consultants to help Law Commission identify, weed out antiquated laws

Aiming to make the Indian legal system more contemporary, the Law Commission of India has decided to hire a team of legal consultants to help identify laws that are no longer relevant and can be repealed. The country's law panel has also decided to work actively on repealing laws that affect the poor. In a circular issued on Wednesday, the law panel said, "The Law Commission intends to prepare a panel of consultants to assist the commission in its broad-based research work on the projects in hand."

The law panel listed a number of projects including the review/repeal of obsolete laws for which it would engage legal consultants. The commission wants to engage consultants in not just identification of laws that have become irrelevant but also identification of laws that require amendments. The circular stated that it would need assistance of the consultants in identification of "laws which are not in harmony with the existing climate of economic liberalisation and need change".

The law commission would also engage the consultants for examination of "laws which affect the poor and carry out post-audit for socioeconomic legislation" and to "suggest suitable measures for quick redressal of citizens' grievances in the field of law". On Friday, BJP chief Amit Shah also cited repeal of obsolete laws as one of the important achievements of the government. Shah announced that in the last three years, the BJP government had repealed 1,100 laws that were irrelevant.

The NDA first initiated the process of review and repeal of obsolete laws in 1998. It created the Commission on Review of Administrative Law, which recommended repeal of 1,382 central laws. Of those, 415 were repealed.

In June 2014, shortly after the Narendra Modi government came to power, the Law Ministry wrote to the Law Commission, seeking a report identifying obsolete laws. In August that year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also set up a two-member panel for performing the same task. In September 2014, the law commission submitted its first report on the matter to the government. Giving a definition to obsolete laws, the commission had said, "First, the subject matter of the law in question is outdated, and a law is no longer needed to govern that subject; second, the purpose of the law in question has been fulfilled and it is no longer needed and third, there is newer law or regulation governing the same subject matter."