Significance Of New Criminal Laws in Today’s India – An Analysis

Abstract

The new criminal laws will come into effect from 1^st July 2024. The earlier laws namely Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and the India Evidence Act remind us about the British era and their imposed laws on us. New India while showing its leadership skills in the world, it also needs to have its own law which tallied with its culture and vision. In this article I have tried to furnish the main features of the new criminal laws and its significance with the ‘India’. The new criminal laws will replace the erstwhile three criminal laws as furnished under: -

Sl. No.

Erstwhile Acts

New Replaced Acts of the erstwhile

1.

Indian Penal Code, 1860.

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.

2.

The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.

3.

The Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.

It is noteworthy to mention that while giving reply in the debate about these new criminal laws, the Home Minister gave reply that the new laws concentrate in giving justice rather than on imposing only punishment to the offender. The intent of the legislatures was to act on the principle ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ and serve justice to the victim at proper time, which is within three years as per the new laws. However, the legislatures debated over bringing these three new criminal laws, but as per the record, it is found that these acts were debated in the house of people when 146 opposition Members of Parliament were on suspension (100 people from Lok Sabha & 46 people from Rajya Sabha). The three bills were passed with the least debate and without any hard time. There was hardly any scope of a good debate available for the opposition to provide feedback to the Government. In a democratic country the opposition plays an important role and without feedback no communication is successful or complete. This new criminal law has been passed as per the principle of ‘Sovereign Command’. But never to forget that the criticisers of Austinian theory state that not all sovereign command can be termed as law. The big question lies is what if the public or the subjects disobey the laws. In a democratic government only the laws which are recognized and accepted by the maximum number of people may be termed as law, others are always subjected to contentious, litigations, protest or even strike. Laws which arise chaos or disobedience cannot be termed as laws. The ‘scope of ‘rule of law’ in this regard that these are three new legislations are laws at present being received the assent from the President after following the due process. Unless the new criminal laws are declared as ‘unconstitutional’ by the Court of Highest Standard i.e. the Supreme Court of India it will be law and the people are bound to obey. There is every possibility that we will get a new era of Judicial Activism in this regard keeping in view of the recent trends of Judiciary to serve only the ‘Constitution’.