Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that the government was in the process of introducing a new draft of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in Parliament.
In his address at a 'chintan shivir' of all state and UTs home ministries in Haryana's Surajkund, said that the government has received several suggestions to improve the CrPC and the IPC.
"Various suggestions have been received regarding improvement in CrPC & IPC. I'm looking into it in detail and invested hours in it. We will very soon come up with new CrPC, IPC drafts in the Parliament," Shah said at the inaugural edition of the two-day programme.
In March 2020, the Union Government had set up a Criminal Law Reforms Committee to make suggestions to revise IPC, CrPC and the Indian Evidence Act 1872.
The Committee was headed by Professor Dr Ranbir Singh, the then VC of National Law University Delhi and consisted of Professor Dr G S Bajpai, the then Registrar of NLU-D, Professor Dr Balraj Chauhan the VC of DNLU, senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani and G P Thareja, former District and Sessions Judge, Delhi.
While the Committee submitted a report to the Government in February 2022, after taking suggestions from the public. The Law Ministry had in April 2022, informed the Rajya Sabha that the government has undertaken a process of comprehensive review of the criminal laws.
Law Street Journal, along with eminent citizens, social workers and advocates, including noted PIL petitioner Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, have been actively raising a strong voice for quite some time to undertake major reforms in criminal laws and colonial era laws to 'Indianise' them.
The Minister informed about the development in the event, organised with the objective to prepare an action plan for the implementation of 'Vision 2047' and 'Panch Pran' announced in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech.
Shah also pointed out that the Centre has taken strong measures against NGOs which were "creating obstacles in India's growth" by amending the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA).
Shah also announced that all states will have National Investigation Agency offices by 2024.
The Home Minister also underlined that it is the collective responsibility of states and the Centre to effectively tackle trans-border crime.
"In our Constitution, law and order is a state subject...but we can be successful against trans-border or borderless crimes only when all states sit together to ponder over and make a common strategy and efforts to curb them," he said.
Shah also said Rs 57,000 crore investment has come to Jammu and Kashmir post-2019 as the revocation of Article 370 has yielded great results.
"After the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir, there has been a 34 % decrease in terrorist activities, a 64 % decrease in the death of security forces and a 90 % decrease in civilian deaths," the Minister said.
