Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that three proposed criminal laws, BNS-2023, BNSS-2023, and BSA-2023, will eliminate delays in the criminal justice system. The laws aim to replace the British-era Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Act, and Indian Evidence Act. Shah highlighted that the proposed laws focus on justice and protecting citizens’ constitutional and human rights. The reforms include summary trials, time limits for filing charge sheets and completing investigations, and pronouncing judgments. The laws also seek to end the adjournment culture and grant legal validity to electronic and digital records.
The three proposed criminal laws are “people-centric” and, once implemented, any delay in the criminal justice system will “cease to exist within one decade”, Union home minister Amit Shah said on Sunday.
The home minister was referring to the proposed criminal laws — Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS-2023), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS-2023) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA-2023), which were introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 11 to replace the British-era Indian Penal Code, 1860, Criminal Procedure Act, 1898, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, respectively.
Addressing the two-day International Lawyers’ Conference organised by the Bar Council of India, Shah said that the existing criminal laws gave power to the British to punish people, whereas the proposed laws focus on justice.
“Due to the existing criminal justice system, there is a lot of delay in rendering justice. For a poor man , getting justice becomes all the more difficult,” he said.
He added: “India’s criminal justice system was imprinted with colonial law. All three new bills do not have colonial imprint but have the flavour of Indian soil. The central point of these three proposed laws is to protect the constitutional and human rights of citizens as well as their personal rights.”
The home minister said that the new laws were “coming after almost 160 years with a completely new approach and new system”.
Shah said that the government was also in the process of creating three ecosystems necessary to support them.
These include, the recently approved ₹7,000-crore allocation for e-courts third phase, ₹3,500-crore for interoperable criminal justice system (ICJS) to digitally convert all data available with police stations, prisons and courts, and the technological initiatives forming part of the proposed criminal laws, he said.
“If these three initiatives and the three new ecosystems are introduced and brought together in our criminal justice system, I assure you that this refrain about delay in the criminal justice system will cease to exist within one decade,” Shah added.
Various reforms for timely and speedy justice have been proposed under the three laws that are pending consideration before a Parliamentary standing committee. Shah enumerated these reforms which include summary trial for cases punishable up to 3 years, time-limit of 60 days for filing charge sheet, 90 days for further investigation, pronouncement of judgment within 30 days of completing arguments, and deemed sanction for prosecuting public servants after 120 days (about 4 months).
In addition, the new laws seek to end the adjournment culture, allows trial to proceed against proclaimed offenders in their absence and grants legal validity to electronic and digital records, among a host of other significant changes.
“The old laws (present IPC, CrPC and Evidence Act) sought to protect the British rulers. Its main purpose was to make them (British) more powerful as their objective was to punish and not to deliver justice. In the new criminal laws, you will find not a single trace of colonial past but the real essence of India,” Shah said. “Our three laws are not to punish but to give justice to every citizen. Here, punishment is one of the stages to deliver justice,” he added.
The two-day conference was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday in the presence of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and union law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal and other judges of the Supreme Court. Shah was speaking at the valedictory function of the event also attended by Union environment and labour minister Bhupender Yadav along with justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul of the Supreme Court, other top court judges, and bar leaders of global law associations.
The home minister said that the focus of introducing legal reforms is to ease the burden on the legal system and to make laws citizen centric. For this purpose, he said that any law at its inception cannot be treated as final and it is important for any government or law-making agency of Parliament to keep an open mind to reform any law and introduce changes in it with time and keeping pace with the problems faced during its implementation.
In this spirit, he referred to the changes introduced by the Government in the insolvency and bankruptcy code (IBC) or the goods and service tax (GST) Act and said, “The intent of law makers is to create a smooth and convenient system relevant to the times. It is not to establish supremacy of those who bring the law,” Shah said.
He urged the lawyers and other stakeholders to examine the three new criminal laws based on the practical day-to-day realities they face while dealing with these laws and send their suggestions to the Union home secretary. “After our Constitution was made, the person of every small part of India is our citizen. The center point in these three laws is protection of every citizen’s constitutional rights, human rights and personal rights.”
Union environment and labour minister Bhupender Yadav in his speech said that the legal reforms introduced by the Government are aimed to improve ease of living. He stressed on the significance of legislative drafting in new laws, a point stressed by PM Modi in his speech at the event on Saturday, and suggested that instead of using legal maxims, judgments and legal literature can focus on ancient Indian wisdom in the context of our country and left it to BCI and the judges to examine how it can be possible.
On the occasion, BCI honoured five legal luminaries with ‘Vidhi Ratna’ awards. The recipients this year were former Attorney Generals K Parasaran, Late Soli J Sorabjee, doyen of the bar Late Ram Jethmalani, constitutional expert Fali Sam Nariman and senior advocate KK Venugopal, who retired as the country’s Attorney General in September last year. The awards were handed over by the home minister.
Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said that these awards will be an annual feature to recognize the contributions by Indian lawyers to the field of law and legal practice both within and outside the country.
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