Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita A 'Copy-Paste' Of Indian Penal Code, 'Wasteful Exercise' : P Chidambaram

The three Bills introduced by the Union Government to replace the Indian Penal Code i "largely a copy and paste of existing laws", said Member of Parliament and Senior Advocate P Chidambaram in his dissent note submitted to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs.

He said the enactment of these three Bills will be a "wasteful exercise that will have many undesirable consequences."

"All that the Bills have done is to make a few amendments (some acceptable, some not acceptable), re-arrange the sections of the existing Laws, and merge different sections into one section with many sub-sections," he said. To illustrate, he cited the example of the offence of murder, which is mentioned as Section 302 in the IPC. However, in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the offence of murder is listed as Section 101.

"Hundreds of thousands of judges, lawyers, police officers - and even the general public- will be put to enormous trouble and inconvenience without any benefit at all. They will have to "re-learn" the laws which will take years before the new provisions are used extensively. This seems to be an exercise in self-glorification rather than a scholarly exercise improve the laws," he said.

He said that the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, effectively, is a copy and paste exercise of nearly 90-95 per cent of the IPC. The few "improvements" could have been easily incorporated with amendments to the IPC.

Chidambaram, who was formerly a Union Minister of Finance and Home Affairs, also took objection to the Hindi title of the bills.  He referred to Article 348 of the Constitution, which prescribe that all Acts shall be in the English language. Laws enacted in English language can be translated into other Indian languages.The name of the Bill must, therefore, be in English and translated into Hindi so translated into other Indian languages, he said.

"To have a Hindi only name to the Bill respective of the language of the Bill is highly objectionable, unconstitutional, an affront to the non-Hindi speaking people (e.g. Tamils, Gujarats or Bengalis) and opposed to federalism," he opined.

He also said that State governments, Bar Associations, State and Central Police organizations, the Indian Police Foundation, the National Law School Universities, judges of the subordinate judiciary who apply the laws every day, eminent retired judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts, eminent senior advocates and legal scholars were not consulted at the consideration stage by circulating the draft Bills and inviting them to comment. 

"We strongly object to the process followed on the grounds of insufficiency, non- inclusionary, non-scholarly and lack of adequate time for consideration by the Members," he said.

On the last day of the monsoon session, the Central Government introduced three bills in the Lok Sabha today to repeal and replace Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Indian Evidence Act.

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