The Hindu : National : 20 States asked to set up law commissions

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20 States asked to set up law commissions

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi: Law Commission of India Chairman Justice A.R. Lakshmanan has asked Chief Ministers of 20 States to set up State law commissions to review outdated laws and to update the legal system.

In his letter to them, Justice Lakshmanan said: “In the fast-changing social, economic and political scenario in the country and to meet the ever increasing aspirations of the common man the legal system needs to be continuously reviewed and updated, otherwise it would be prone to become obsolete, losing its efficacy and adequacy and consequently cease to be an instrument of dynamic social order and development.”

The letter said that “courts, in the process of interpreting the statutes, may give conflicting and divergent decisions. Contradictory and inconsistent case laws may accumulate around some statutory provisions and thereby necessitating from time to time reconciliation of conflicting cases, to assimilate the judicial pronouncements and to improve and revise the laws in the light of these rulings.”

The revision of laws was a continuous process in any developing country and the role of the law commission in each State was all the more important to seriously deliberate and make recommendations to the government for effecting changes in the existing statute and to enact new laws.

So far only Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Meghalaya had set up law commissions to critically study the existing laws and to understand whether “there are any lacunae which need to be improved so as to impart speedy justice to the common man.”

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