The submission of the four-member committee's report is the culmination of a process which began in May 1997, during the tenure of the United Front government. Following a conference of chief ministers held in New Delhi, all ministries and government departments were directed to list and assess relevance of the laws in their sphere of functioning. Then in April 1998, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee stepped in and gave assurance at a meeting of chambers of commerce that a holistic review of laws and procedures would be undertaken by the BJP Government.

Five months and 43 meetings later, the report with formulae for``exorcising the dead wood from the statute books'' has been submitted to Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar. Among the recommendations is one incorporating a ``sunset provision'' in laws so that they cease to exist after a specified period. Another important recommendation is for the Government to club together the 315 laws which are in the process of being amended under one amendment Bill and to enact it within six months.

Members of the committee say that though their task was limited to examining about 2,500 Central laws, the actual figure of existing laws in India would be 10 times higher (almost 25,000) if laws enacted by state governments were taken into consideration. Each state is estimated to have between 700-800 laws, with Orissa topping the list with some 1,100 laws. But despite the plethora of laws, the committee reports there is an extremely poor interface between the Centre and the states, even for legislation on subjects in the concurrent list, such as labour welfare, land acquisition and thelevy of duties.

What is obviously needed now is an equally radical approach in implementation of the committee's recommendations.

H D Shourie, one of the members of the committee, describes their exercise as one of ``enormous magnitude'' and says he is looking forward to ``concrete'' steps for implementation. Says he: ``What the Government should do is to immediately provide ministries and departments the list of laws from the catalogue of 1,300 which are relevant to them and to ask them if they have any objections to their repeal. The objective is to have these laws struck off the statute books at the earliest.''

Another committee member, former secretary to Government P.C. Jain, says the day the report was submitted, Prabhat Kumar told them a committee of secretaries would be examining the recommendations.

``We found that there has been a reluctance on the part of the officialdom to suggest repeal of any existing law. Now that we have listed them, the repeal of a vast majority of the 1,300 lawslisted by us should be no problem.''

Among the 1,300 laws the committee wants thrown out are 166 Central Acts (including 11 pre-nationalisation Acts and 20 validation Acts), 315 amendment Acts, 12 British statutes still in force, 17 war-time permanent ordinances, 115 Central Acts relating to state subjects and 700 appropriation Acts (approximately), which have been passed by Parliament.

While making out a case for administrative reform, the report likens the existence of copious, obsolete laws to ``new despotism''. It states that while the task force reports received from 45 ministries and departments (they constitute the second volume of the committee's final report) were useful, they nonetheless displayed an ``isolated approach'' and did not deal with the various rules and regulations which constitute the subordinate legislation of the Government.

The committee has also critically examined what it describes as a ``flurry of fragmented individual activities, often at cross-purposes'' instead of whatwas most wanted: a sector-based approach to laws to address the needs of users, the common man and the industry. One example is a subject like the National Housing Policy where there has been ``little effort'' to converge the use of existing laws with the needs of the departments and ministries.

On the on-going efforts to amend laws in the post-liberalisation era, the report says that some pieces of legislation like the Sick Industrial Companies Administration Bill, Urban Land Ceiling Act, Regulatory Authority Bill and Conservation of Bio-diversity Bill, among others, were still pending clearance from Parliament. There were still others, like the Delhi Rent Control Act and the Hire Purchase Act, which had been passed by Parliament but not yet notified.

The report comes down heavily on the bureaucracy not only for its failure to reduce the legislative burden but for also adding to it. It was found that almost 28 million cases were pending in court, including 10 million criminal cases. And the backlog, thecommittee concludes, has been growing because of the tendency of government officials to file appeals.

``There is a tendency to take the safer course of making appeals to courts for adjudication of an issue rather than to take decisions which normally would be within the scope of powers of the executive,'' it states.

As far as the legislative machinery is concerned, the report notes that while the Law Commission is meant to from time to time ``cleanse the statute books'', no such exercise has been undertaken by it after 1988 (which covers legislation up to the year 1984). The crux of the problem, according to the committee, appears to be that ``none of these (legal) authorities is prepared to take any risk in recommending the repeal of an enactment as everyone is apprehensive that the repeal may revive pending matters which have been put to rest by those enactments''.

An example is given of the Law Commission not asking for a repeal of the Privy Council Abolition Act on the pretext that it may revivethe operation of any British statutes which confer jurisdiction on the Privy Council.Thus, the ``unenviable'' task of screening the laws and enactments which had become obsolete and anachronistic fell on the four-member committee constituted by the BJP Government.

There are also a host of general recommendations made by the committee. For one, that all information about laws, regulations and procedures be simplified, written in simple language and publicised through the electronic media. Also, it says, there is a need for a deeper study of the entire complex of laws and regulations which effect people living below the poverty line.

The report also has separate sections dealing with legislation concerning consumer protection, health care, environment, taxation, the problems of foreign investors and of investors with Non-Banking Financial Companies.

Going on forever...

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