New Parliament should get rid of bad laws

• As Parliament is reconstituted after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the following laws should be reconsidered and repealed to ensure justice, equality, liberty for all citizens.

Law needs to be revisit

• Citizenship Amendment Act: As the Citizenship Amendment Bill was introduced in Parliament in 2019, the country protested over concerns that coupled with the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC)
  • It could lead to the disenfranchisement of many Indian citizens.
• The Home Minister's insistence that the NRC would be implemented nationwide, despite the disastrous pilot project in Assam - where around 6 percent of residents were left out of the final NRC list - exacerbated these concerns.
  • If this exclusion rate is extrapolated nationally, crores of Indians could potentially become stateless.
• Criminal Law Bills: The recent arbitrarily-enacted Criminal Law Bills, require urgent reconsideration and repeal
  • since they encompass the provisions on marital rape and sedition, and pose the risk of “police raj” by criminalising “resisting, refusing, ignoring or disregarding to conform to any direction given by a police officer”.
• Marital Rape Exception: Section 63 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita deals with the offence of rape but provides an exception for marital rape
• It undermines the fundamental principle that rape is a violation of personal autonomy and bodily integrity, regardless of the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. Sedition: The use of Section 124A of the IPC (the old sedition law) had been kept in abeyance following a Supreme Court order in May 2022.
• The court had given the government time to reconsider the law. Subsequently, the Home Minister claimed that sedition has been removed from the list of offences in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
• The Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners Act, 2023: The Act changes the composition of the selection committee to appoint Election Commissioners.
• The Supreme Court’s directive that the Chief Justice should be a part of the Committee was disregarded.
• The Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha), and a nominated Union cabinet minister now make the selection, giving the Union government total control over the selection.
• The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2023: The Act empowered the Union government to exclusively auction mining leases and composite exploration licences for certain critical high-value minerals such as cadmium, selenium, nickel, cobalt, tin, etc.
• It also dispensed with the forest clearances required for mine reconnaissance and prospecting operations.
• It is critical to point out that the Act allows sub-surface excavation as part of reconnaissance, which had been prohibited under the 1957 Act.
• The environmental consequences of such invasive operations can be severe and irreversible, undermining sustainable development goals and disregarding previously existing environmental protections.
• The Transgender Persons Act, 2019: The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, only recognises “sexual abuse” with a maximum punishment of two years as opposed to life imprisonment for rape of women.
• This punishment is insufficient and discriminatory.