Bill for joint LS, Assembly polls in Budget Session?
Colonial legacy: Prasad
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to push for a legislation in the Budget Session of Parliament to pave the way for holding simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies whose terms come to an end in October 2018, according to BJP sources.
After the Modi govt came to power, a panel was set up to look into repealing of archaic laws
The Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed two Bills to repeal 245 obsolete and archaic colonial era laws, including the 158- year- old Calcutta Pilots Act of 1859 and the 1911 Prevention of Seditious Meeting Act.
Describing them as an “unfortunate part of the colonial legacy”, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in the reply to the bills that by repealing them, the Government had showed its pro-reforms face and its focus on ‘ swachch’ governance ( symbolically referring to cleaning up of the system by repealing such archaic laws).
He moved the Repealing and Amending Bill and the Repealing and Amending ( Second) Bill which would repeal these age- old laws. These were later passed.
Some of the old acts that have been repealed are the Hackney Carriage Act 1879 which was legislated for the regulation and control of hackney- carriages, Dramatic Performance Act 1876 when theatre was being used a medium of protest against the British rule.
Another such old act which was repealed by the Lok Sabha was ‘ The Ganges Tolls Act, 1867’ which provided for collecting toll “not exceeding 12 annas” on certain boats and steamers plying on the Ganga to improve navigation of the river between Allahabad ( UP) and Dinapore ( Bihar).
Mr Prasad said 1,029 old laws were first repealed by Parliament in 1950 and the last time such old laws were abolished during the Atal Behari Vajpayee government that repealed old laws in 2004. After the Modi government came to power, a two- member panel was set up to look into the repealing of archaic laws and the panel also consulted the Centre and the state government before recommending the legislations to be repealed.
Some 1,824 acts were repealed after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over the reins of the government, the law minister said.
When Mr Prasad spoke on abolishing the Prevention of Seditious Meeting Act, 1911, he was needled by BJD MP Tathagata Satpathy who alluded to the use of the sedition provision in the Indian Penal Code against opposition activists by the BJP governments in certain states. To this, the law minister said that all senior ministers in the BJP government, including the Prime Minister, had vehemently opposed Emergency in 1975 and his government was in favour of the freedom of the press.