Prime Minister Narendra Modi said here on Saturday that having identified nearly 1,700 obsolete laws in the country, his Government working towards repealing all the outdated laws. Addressing the concluding sesquicentennial function of the Advocates Association of Western India (AAWI) here, the Prime Minister said the world is looking towards India with great hope. “One of the reasons for this is that the investor community across the world trusts the independence of India’s judicial system,” he said.
Appreciating the role played by the AAWI over 150 years — an association to which both Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel belonged, Modi said that the founders of the association had created this bar, in order to pursue excellence in the profession. He said the country’s freedom struggle was led by people from the fields of law and education. Exhorting the members of AAWI to think about how the bar will go forward after 150 years, the Prime Minister said that along with quick justice, “quality justice” was also the need of the hour. “This depends a lot on advocates arguing the cases. There is a need for advocates to specialise, particularly in emerging areas of litigation such as international law and cyber crime. Acquaintance with forensic science is now a must for those associated with the legal profession,” Modi said.
The Prime Minister said the AAWI had the strength to raise the capabilities of the advocates to deal with these emerging areas. He said well-argued cases provide satisfaction to advocates, besides raising institutional credibility. The Prime Minister said laws were sometimes not drafted well, and therefore led to multiple interpretations. He said the bar associations could play a significant role in drafting good laws with minimum grey areas. He said training in drafting of laws was essential.