The Central Government of India to repeal 1,824 obsolete laws
Various rules put up obstacles to functioning smooth administration and ease to do business. The Narendra Modi government will soon remove such archaic laws, which survived for years like a relic in a museum but with no relevance in modern India.
- Like an inspector shall have well-brushed teeth. He shall be disqualified if he has a pigeon chest, knock knees, flatfeet and hammer toes. (Indian Motor Vehicles Act 1914)
- Law which allowed the British monarch to review decisions of all Indian courts.
- One could have been jailed if found anything worth more than Rs 10 and did not report it to a revenue officer. (Indian Treasure Trove Act, 1878)
- toll tax cannot be more than 2 annas, a denomination not in use any more, for boats ferrying passengers across the river Ganga.
- Kites were also aircraft and one requires to obtain (Indian Aircraft Act, 1934)
- Another one is that policemen in few states shall to ensure that air-dropped pamphlets do not fall in their areas.
- The government has now established a committee that shall be headed by R Ramanujam, to re-examine all Acts recommended to be repealed by Review of Administrative Laws which was set up by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998.
During the election campaign of 2014, Narendra Modi promised that for every law passed, his government would repeal 10 obsolete laws.
While successive governments could remove just 1,301 obsolete laws, the present central government has managed to scrape 1,200 Acts in just three years and would repeal 1,824 more obsolete central Acts, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad opinioned.
Major Laws Abolished:
- Laws on licence to kill and capture of wild elephants in certain circumstances,
- segregation and medical treatment of lepers,
- prohibition of pledging of labour of children (child slavery)
- agreement with Pakistan on exchange of prisoners,
- rules regulating recruitment of foreigners during pre-Independence period,
- regulating the grant of titles to qualified persons in western medical science and
- continuation of use of courts for those who migrated to Pakistan and power to regulate prices of newspapers in Bengal, Assam and Punjab.