Madras HC issues notice to Centre over DMK's plea against three new criminal laws

Chennai: The Madras High Court on Friday issued notice to the Centre over a plea by the DMK to declare as ultra vires and unconstitutional, the three new criminal laws brought in by the Union government.

The three laws-- Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam have come into effect from July 1. They have replaced the Indian Penal Code, The Code of Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Evidence Act.

A division bench comprising Justices S S Sundar and N Senthil Kumar before whom the petition filed by DMK Organising Secretary R S Bharathi came up for hearing, issued notice to the Centre and gave it four weeks time to respond.

According to the petitioner, the government introduced the three Bills and got them passed by the Parliament without any meaningful discussion.

In the absence of any substantive changes, mere shuffling of sections was unnecessary and will cause a lot of inconvenience and confusion regarding the interpretation of the provisions, he added.

He said shuffling of sections will make it very difficult for the judges, advocates, the law enforcing authorities and the general public to correlate the new provisions with the old ones to search for precedents.

It seems the exercise was being done only to "Sanskritise" the titles of the Acts without any devotion to revisit the laws, he contended.

Bharathi further said the government cannot claim that it was an act of Parliament. The enactments were made by only one limb of the Parliament viz., the ruling party and its allies, keeping away the opposition parties, he claimed.

He said the naming of the Acts in Hindi/Sanskrit was violative of Article 348 of the Constitution, which mandates, inter alia, that the authoritative texts of all Bills to be introduced in either house of Parliament shall be in English.