Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday said the government has identified 287 obsolete laws to be repealed in the winter session of Parliament.
Mr. Prasad said the Centre has already written for urgent feedback to various departments concerned in whose jurisdictions the outdated amending laws continue to exist.
In the previous session, the government had introduced the Repealing and Amending Bill, 2014, to repeal 36 obsolete laws. The Bill is currently pending.
Mr. Prasad said the government is also acting on a September 12 report submitted by the Law Commission of India, identifying 72 antiquated statutes, which have to be immediately axed.
These 72 laws are part of 261 statutes, the oldest one of them dating back to 1836, which “prima facie require repeal as they are inconsistent with modern times” as per the Commission report.
“By October middle, the Law Commission would give me another report identifying 50 other obsolete laws,” Mr. Prasad said.
He also informed that the Centre is considering a proposal to repeal 700 Appropriation Acts. Every Parliament passes around 12 Appropriation laws each year to be used whenever the government decides to withdraw money from the Consolidated Fund of India. After every such withdrawal, the particular Appropriation law becomes infructuous.
These Appropriation statutes have lain redundant for years despite a recommendation from the P.C. Jain Commission, set up by the Vajpayee government, in its 1998 report to axe them.
He said a separate committee formed by the Prime Minister's Office is also working on identifying outdated laws. “So there is multi-level work being done to repeal outdated laws,” Mr. Prasad said.
