CCS celebrates 6th year of the Appeal for National Repeal Law Day

Centre for Civil Society (CCS), India’s leading think-tank advocating social change through public policy, organized the Appeal for Repeal Law Day 2019, through the launch of “Repeal Law Compendium” for all Northeastern States of India. To mark the 6th year of the Repeal Law project, the launch was followed by a panel discussion on ‘Statutory Clean Up:
Institutionalisation of Repeal Law Day’. The eminent panel consisted of India’s prominent legal, policy and industry experts such as Vikramjit Banerjee, Additional Solicitor General of India; Arundhati Katju, Independent Litigator & Supreme Court Lawyer; PK Malhotra, Former Law Secretary, Ministry of Law & Justice; Maneesh Chhibber, Consulting Editor, The Print; Hemant Batra, Advocate, Vice President, SAARCLAW and Founder & Counsel, Kaden Boriss Global and Dr Neeti Shikha, Head, Centre for Insolvency and Bankruptcy. The panel addressed the imperative need for a legal framework that recognises the immediate exigency to scrap or amend obsolete, redundant laws that materially impede the lives of citizens, entrepreneurs and/or the Government.

The Repeal Law Compendium are produced by CCS in collaboration with Research Partners-Symbiosis Law School, Noida (SLS), National Academy of Legal Studies & Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, and our Legal Partners, Kaden Boriss, who ensure that the laws in the compendium are in keeping with the evolving jurisprudence. The 2019 Compendium brings forth laws to be repealed in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Sikkim, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Nagaland.
Substantiating the need to repeal archaic laws in the Northeastern states, Vikramjit Banerjee, Additional Solicitor General of India and the Former Advocate General of Nagaland, in his opening address said that “Legal Pluralism; Northeast till today is a living example of that”.
Speaking on the impediment caused to individual and economic liberty by archaic laws, Hemant Batra, Founder, Kaden Boriss Global, said “any nation wanting to go in for rapid redistribution of existing wealth and income would go in for multiple laws. Whereas a nation looking for creation of new wealth would look for annulment of laws, it would look at eliminating barriers to rapid growth.”
Maneesh Chhibber, Consulting Editor, The Print, propounded that the separation of roles between the legislative and the judiciary is paramount, and “not just laws, time has come to repeal the constitution. If not repeal, at least amend it for our time”.

Bringing together like minded organisations, scholars, academicians and lawyers, the panel engaged in a constructive dialogue around the potential processes required for the institutionalisation of repeal of laws, and acknowledge one day in the year as the National Repeal Law Day.