New Delhi: Asserting that legislative drafting is a crucial component of Indian democracy and lack of knowledge about it not only weakens the laws, but the entire democratic system, Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said that Article 370 was meant to be a “temporary” provision since the beginning and the framers of the Constitution had put it there “intelligently.”
Inaugurating a training programme on Legislative Drafting in New Delhi, Shah said that when the Article was framed, “it was mentioned in the index as Temporary Provision of Article 370”. “Even debates on the Article were missing from the records of constituent assembly debates,” Shah said and added that they were not printed.
“An article of the Constitution cannot be temporary, it can be amended. If you read it even today, the old Constitution, it is clearly written as Temporary Provision of Article 370,” Shah said. The Central government repealed Article 370 in 2019 and bifurcated erstwhile J&K into two Union Territory (UT) Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.
He said that it is very important for any democratic country that its legislative drafting skills keep upgrading and becoming more efficient with time. “Indian democracy is acknowledged as the world’s largest democracy, and in a way, democracy was born in India as its idea emerged in India only. We have incorporated the traditions of democracy across India. The Constitution of India is considered to be the most perfect Constitution in the world and the people, who framed our Constitution not only incorporated the country’s traditional democratic values in it, but also tried to modernise it according to the needs of contemporary times,” he said.
Shah said that there are three main pillars of democracy – Legislature, Executive and Judiciary and our Constitution framers built our entire democratic governance system on these three pillars.
Also read: Congress working on banned PFI's agenda, claims Amit Shah in Karnataka election rally
“The functions of these three systems have been efficiently divided. The function of the Legislature is to consider public welfare and the problems of the people and find solutions, following legal procedures. The Parliament discusses the changes being noticed across different fields globally, and accordingly formulates new laws and amends old laws to make our system more relevant. Consequently, following the spirit of the newly framed law, the executive implements it,” Shah said.
He said that the judiciary works independently in our country to interpret the law in case of a dispute. He said that our Constitution framers divided the roles of these three pillars in our entire democratic system. “The function of the Legislative Department is to formulate the political will of Parliament and the Union Cabinet into law.
The function of the Legislative Department is to provide a legal format to the political will and ways to solve the problems of the people and the different needs of the country. For this reason, drafting attains great importance. Shah said that if the drafting is better, it will be easier to educate about the law with minimal chances of errors by the executive. If grey areas are left in the drafting, it will lead to encroachment in interpretation, while, if the drafting is complete and lucid, its interpretation would also be clear,” said Shah.
The Home Minister said that drafting should be done in as simple and clear words as possible because a law drafted in clichéd words always creates controversy. He said that the more simple and clear the law is in words, the more it remains undisputed. Shah said that making such a law that the court does not need to intervene is a medal for drafting a good law.
“Since Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, the government has worked a lot in the field of laws and since 2015 till now the government has done the work of repealing thousands of irrelevant laws. By doing this, the government led by Prime Minister Modi has done the work of liberating the lawyers, society and courts,” he said.
