Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh government, in the wake of emerging possibilities of investment in the state, has decided to do away with around 1,000 archaic laws framed during British rule in India. Many of those laws, which are nothing but a documentary burden on record keepers, are even more than half and a century old.
These laws, which the state government has decided to repeal, were framed by British rulers and with India becoming a Republic and Constitution being promulgated, they lost the relevance and need.
Yogi government contemplates to abolish such trite and obsolete laws in one go through a bill during the upcoming session of the state legislature due to start from February 20. UP law minister Brijesh Pathak said many such laws had lost relevance in the wake of new legal provisions enacted over the years. "The list is being prepared and all such laws will be repealed in one go," said the minister.
The laws framed way back in 1902, when United Province came into being, also figure in the list for proposed revocation. Moreover, the list which is being compiled by the law department also mentions "The United Province Act, 1890", enacted by the British Governor-General-in-Council on October 16, 1890, for better administration of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh.
Even the Union government had brought two bills in Lok Sabha in December, repealing 245 obsolete and archaic laws, including the 1911 Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act. As per the claims of Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, over 1,800 obsolete laws had been abolished since the Modi government came to power.
Before that, Parliament had repealed 1,029 laws in 1950.
On coming to power at Centre, PM Modi had declared one obsolete law would be repealed daily. Even National Law Commission concluded after an analysis of Indian legal system that a number of laws were existing on papers only and had no utility. The Law Commission had asked the states to repeal such worn-out laws.
Consequently, in UP, CM Yogi Adityanath directed different departments to produce their respective lists of laws which were inconsistent with the newer laws and the sources confirmed that around 1000 laws identified which needed to be repealed. “There are a number of such laws over which a new policy or an act has come. For example, Mirzapur Mining Act has been replaced by State Mining Act but the older one is still present in papers,” said Pathak.
Incidentally, the decision to scrap obsolete laws has come over a week after Yogi government celebrated the first UP Diwas to commemorate the 68th year of UP's formation from the erstwhile United Provinces.
Some of the Acts in the repeal list include The Oudh State Act -1869, The Oudh Taluqdars Relief Act-1870, The King of Oudh State Act-1887 & 1888, The United Province Act -1890, The Oudh Lodge Act-1876, Sales of Land for Revenue Arrears,1845, The Rent Recovery Act-1853, The Agricultural Loans Act-1884, etc.