Kerala - Kochi   

Law reforms commission prepares five draft bills

Kochi: The Kerala Law Reforms Commission headed by V.R. Krishna Iyer, former Supreme Court judge, has prepared five draft bills and sent them to the Minister for Law M. Vijayakumar.

The draft bills are: The Kerala Repealing and Saving Bill, the Kerala Literary Education, Cultural, Scientific and Charitable Societies Registration Bill, the Kerala Inland Fisheries and Aqua-culture Bill, Kerala Children’s Code Bill and the Kerala Victims (Criminal Injuries) Right to Assistance Bill. The first bill relates to repealing of “otiose enactments numbering about 810.” The commission was of the view that these enactments were totally obsolete and should “not clutter up the statute book.”

The second bill is a unification bill. The Kerala State was once territorially made up of the princely States of Travancore and Cochin and of Malabar which was part of British India which later became the Madras State. By the process of reorganisation of State, the three areas with minor mutations emerged as Kerala State. There are divergent laws on more or less the same subject in the three different regions which necessitated unification following formation of the State.

This unification operation has been done by the Commission in a rough form on the subject of registration of literacy and scientific societies.

The third is a unification of the fisheries law, which prevails in different form in three parts of the State, and what the commission has done is a unification of the law on the principle of one State - one law.

The Kerala Children’s Code is based on a Central committee discussion and draft bill with necessary modification. The committee headed by the law reform commission chairman V.R. Krishna Iyer was constituted by the UNICEF. The bill prepared by this committee was presented to the then Prime Minister. The commission has made necessary changes in consultation with Gopalakrishnan and Madhava Menon, eminent scholars in the field of law.

The next bill relates to “victimology,” which is a new development in the criminological dimension of jurisprudence, according to the commission. A more detailed report on the subject would be submitted to the State government in the final session. The present one is a preliminary one so that the government may have the opportunity to scan and scrutinise and be ready with an early legislation on the subject.

The commission has insisted that the State government take up these five bills as “matter of urgency.” The commission chairman said the five draft bills would be “therapeutically important in making the State legal matrix progressive humane and constitutionally sound.”

The chairman had invited judges of the High Court, jurists in the State and the public generally to offer creative views on the subject of law reforms in the State. Unfortunately, only a few had responded.

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