The ambitious task of the Narendra Modi Government to review all laws and remove obsolete statutes has yielded a new Bill which seeks to weed out 287 legislations. This will be in addition to an already pending Bill in Parliament where four principal Acts and 32 amendments have been listed to be struck off the statute book.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the new Bill will be tabled in the Winter Session of Parliament. “We plan to bring a new Bill to repeal 287 Acts,” Prasad told reporters, giving status on the extensive work being carried out by the law Ministry in coordination with other Ministries to identify such laws which have become unproductive or have outlived the limited purpose for which they got introduced. In addition, Prasad indicated that the Ministry is also working overtime to ensure about 700 Appropriation Acts which have lost relevance are junked.

Terming it as “legal scavenging”, the law Minister said, “We are consulting the Finance Ministry. I have asked my department to take a considered legal view on repealing these Appropriation Acts which have lost their relevance.”

The law Commission in its latest report to the Centre had recommended an urgent relook on a large number of Appropriation Acts that were irrelevant to be kept alive. “It is common knowledge that Appropriation Acts are intended to operate for a limited period of time-authorising expenditures for the duration of one financial year, or less, for example in the case of Vote on Account Bills. Though these Acts are not usually included in any list of Central Acts, either by the Ministry of law and Justice, or elsewhere, these laws still technically remain on the books,” the Commission had said.

While the law Ministry had mandated the law Commission to recommend laws that can be repealed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last month constituted a separate committee to identify “obsolete” laws which, he believes would hamper governance by creating “avoidable confusion”. The law Commission recommended revoking 72 obsolete statutes and said that it was in the process of identifying 261 more statutes in this regard.