Sh Narender Modi, No.SKG/PMO/005 11 Jun 2014
New Delhi-110003.
Consolidation will definitely encourage compliance because of enhanced transparency & simplicity. In spill over form it is even difficult for departmental officers to understand it.
(2) In addition, at many places penalties prescribed by law are unrealistically low making it ineffective, which again stresses the need for review of old laws enacted more than 4-5 decades earlier. This may be done not only to update some of the provisions but also weed out the redundancy. E.g. section 283 of IPC prescribes a penalty of Rs.200/- (only) for causing danger or obstruction in public way or line of navigation.
If enactments of new laws, without weeding out old ones, keep on going with same pace it will make the life of common man very burdensome who will have law for every breath.
In the absence of review & consolidation, duplicity is also happening at many places; new laws are enacted office orders are issued without first thoroughly examining the existing ones. New ones are imposed on existing laws. For example (i) for road safety, (ii) Environment protection, (iii) Food safety there are so many laws, regulations, circulars, court pronouncement in scatted manner at both state & central level that this in itself has become a mess.
The requirement of law concerning road safety, traffic, food adulteration & environment is same throughout the country irrespective of any specific location. At least for these as much consolidation, at center level, should be done as possible. The dispersed form of law, on one side, gives rise to corruption because it gives discretionary power to executives and on other side make whole situation ambiguous and make people believe that we have confusing laws which are not transparent.
I request that a committee be constituted to examine all the laws with a view to examine:
(i) Consolidating the scattered provisions,
(ii) Updating penalties,
(iii) Weeding out redundancy and
(iv) Fixing pre-defined life of circular issued under taxation laws e.g. any circular issued concerning taxation should be in force maximum up to next budget where it must get consolidated in main enactment.
Citizen's reporter
S K Goyalcwaskg@gmail.com