Government today withdrew from Lok Sabha a bill which sought to repeal archaic laws, some of which were already repealed through a previous version of the same bill, to avoid the duplicacy and is set to introduce a revised version .
Law Minister D V Sadanana Gowda withdrew the Repealing and Amending (Third) Bill, 2015, in Lok Sabha amid din created by Opposition over the Lalit Modi controversy.
The Bill, introduced by him in May this year, aimed to scrap 187 old laws. Since 30 of them have already been repealed through the Repealing and Amending (Second) Bill, 2014, the rest 157 will now be deleted from the statute books through the Repealing and Amending (Fourth) Bill, 2015, cleared by the Union Cabinet on July 16.
These bills are part of the government's policy to do away with archaic laws.
The latest bill, to be introduced in the ongoing Monsoon session, will seek to scrap a total of 295 obsolete Acts, including 157 which were part of the bill withdrawn today.
"Instead of bringing amendments to remove the flaw, we decided to withdraw the Bill. A new bill cleared by the Cabinet will repeal the remaining bills," Gowda later said.
According to Law Ministry, with the passage of two similar bills in Parliament, 125 irrelevant laws have been repealed so far.
Among the laws that stand repealed but were part of the bill withdrawn today are: The Export-Import Bank of India (Amendment) Act, 1998; The Recovery of Debts Due to Banks and Financial Institutions (Amendment) Act, 2000; Small Industries Development Bank of India (Amendment) Act, 2000; National Housing Bank (Amendment) Act, 2000; Major Port Trusts (Amendment) Act, 2000; General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Amendment Act, 2002; Banking Regulation (Amendment and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2004; The State Bank of India (Amendment) Act, 2007; Merchant Shipping (Amendment) Act, 2007 and Banking Laws (Amendment) Act, 2012.
All these were earlier repealed through the Repealing and Amending (Second) Bill, 2014 introduced in Lok Sabha on December 3, 2014 by Gowda. It was passed by Rajya Sabha on May 5.
