Defer implementation of new criminal laws, build consensus first: Ex-bureaucrats tell government
The three new laws that will take effect on July 1 ‘were rushed through parliamentary approval without having to face critical questioning’, they said.
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A group of 109 civil servants on Friday urged the Union government to defer the implementation of the three new criminal laws and ensure that they are reviewed at an all-party meeting.
On June 16, Arjun Ram Meghwal, the minister of state (independent charge) law and justice, said the three new laws – Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam – are scheduled to come into force on July 1.
The laws, replacing the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act, were passed in the Winter Session of Parliament in December in the absence of several Opposition MPs.
A hundred Opposition MPs in the Lower House, besides 46 in the Upper House, were suspended during the Parliament session for allegedly disrupting the proceedings as they sought a discussion on the December 13 security breach in the Lok Sabha chamber.
On Friday, the former civil servants, who are part of the Constitutional Conduct Group, said in an open letter that the three new laws “were rushed through parliamentary approval without having to face critical questioning”.
“As a result, a number of valid and important questions about the laws remain unanswered,” they wrote.
The former civil servants said that concerns about the laws fall into three broad categories, the...
