The Yogi government led Uttar Pradesh might become the first Indian state to repeal about 1000 British era laws in one go, if a TOI report is to be believed. In order to implement it, the state government has created a list of such obsolete laws, which will be repealed via a bill presented in the upcoming budget session.
As per UP’s law minister Brijesh Pathak, many of these laws had lost relevance thanks to the legislation which has been enacted over the years. One such law being scrapped is The United Province Act, 1890, brought into practice by the British Governor-General-in-Council, back in October 16, 1890. The purpose of this law was better administration of Oudh and North-Western Provinces, territories which don’t officially exist in that name today.
Earlier in 2016, it was reported that the Modi government had famously scrapped about 1,159 obsolete laws in two years, a huge increase from the 1,301 such laws which were repelled in the last 64 years. This approximately turns out to be a 2800% increase in obsolete laws being scrapped under the Modi government, as compared to the previous governments.
Some of these laws in question were, “licence to kill and capture wild elephants in certain circumstances”, “segregation and medical treatment of lepers”, “agreement with Pakistan with regards to exchange of prisoners” and “power to regulate the prices of newspapers”.
This repealing of laws has also continued in 2017 with reports coming out which claim that 105 laws were to be scrapped. This was to be achieved by bringing in the Repealing and Amending Bill, in the then upcoming budget session. As per Ravi Shankar Prasad, more than 1,800 obsolete laws have been abolished by his government since coming to power.
This exercise to repel obsolete laws prominently began in September 2014 via the 20th Law Commission of India which was headed by Justice AP Shah, who asked law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to continue the process of Identification of Obsolete Laws.
