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Kerala law panel finishing its task

Special Correspondent

KOCHI: After making 101 recommendations, some of them revolutionary in nature, the Law Reforms Commission, Kerala, headed by Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, will wind up its work by the end of this month.

It was set up in November 2007 with the main objective of rectifying flaws in the existing laws and recommending the repeal of obsolete enactments. Mr. Iyer will hand over the draft Bills to a government representative here.

“We have done our duty”

Most of the recommendations have been sent to the government from time to time. “We have done our duty and now it is up to the government to decide,” said T.V. Ramakrishnan, Vice-Chairman of the commission and a former High Court Judge.

101 Bills recommended

Of the 101 Bills recommended, 36 are for amending or replacing laws in tune with the times. The rest have to be enacted afresh.

The commission has recommended the repeal of 146 Acts that are out of sync with current needs.

Eight of the recommended Bills seek to consolidate the existing laws. Some of the existing laws originally applied to the former regions of the State — Travancore, Kochi, Thiru-Kochi and Malabar.

Kerala’s Left Democratic Front government had decided to do away with a number of laws that were carried over from the time of the princely states of Travancore and Kochi and the British government in Malabar, finding them to be obsolete or superfluous.

In the Governor’s address to the Assembly in June 2006, it proposed to undertake the process. Over a year later, the eight-member Commission was set up. The number was raised to 11.

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