New Delhi: From replacing the set of criminal laws that have been in use since before independence, to bringing in India’s first data protection act — the year 2023 saw several significant laws being passed.
The most significant were the three new criminal laws to replace the colonial-era the Indian Penal Code, 1860, the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
Besides these, at least 34 bills were passed throughout the year. ThePrint brings you the ten most important bills passed in 2023.
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New criminal laws
The Narendra Modi government had introduced three new bills — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, (BNS 2023), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS, 2023), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill, 2023, (BSB, 2023) — during the monsoon session of Parliament in August. The bills sought to replace existing criminal laws — the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860; the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973 and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, respectively.
While introducing the bills in Parliament, Home Minister Amit Shah said the laws these would repeal were made to “safeguard and strengthen the British”, asserting that the new ones would “transform our criminal justice system”.
After they were tabled, the bills were referred to a 31-member Parliamentary Standing Committee, headed by BJP MP Brij Lal, for review. This panel adopted its report on the bills on 7 November, with Opposition MPs flagging several errors and recommending more than 50 changes.
Eventually, the government withdrew these and reintroduced new iterations, which received Presidential assent on 25 December.
However, there isn’t much clarity on when the new laws will be enforced. According to a government notification, they “shall come into force on such date as the central government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint”.
Also Read: New criminal law bill passed in Lok Sabha redefines sedition & ‘terrorist act’, omits bestiality
Chief Election Commissioner & Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill
Also first tabled during the monsoon session, the controversial bill says that the chief election commissioner and other election commissioners will be appointed by the President upon the recommendation of a selection committee comprising the prime minister, a Union cabinet minister, and the Leader of Opposition/leader of the largest opposition party in Lok Sabha.
Most importantly, it overturned a Supreme Court order from March this year, when a five-judge Constitution bench modified the process for appointing members of the Election Commission of India (ECI). The court held that a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and the Chief Justice of India would advise the President on ECI appointments.
The Bill now takes the CJI out of the equation.
The judgment was passed on a 2015 public interest litigation challenging the constitutional validity of the practice of appointing members of the ECI.
President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent to this bill Thursday.
Women’s Reservation Bill 2023 [The Constitution (One Hundred Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023]
Introduced and passed at the monsoon session with an overwhelming majority, the bill reserves a third of all seats for women in Lok Sabha, state legislative assemblies, and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. This also includes seats reserved for SCs and STs in Lok Sabha and state legislatures.
The reservation will be for 15 years from the date of commencement of the Act.
Provisions of the bill are unlikely to see the light in the upcoming general election because it will come into force only after the delimitation exercise, which will be based on a population census that hasn’t been announced yet.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023
In August, the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, got Presidential assent to become India’s first data protection act. This came after years of back and forth over what provisions of such a law should contain.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, applies to the processing of digital personal data within India where such data is collected online, or collected offline and is digitised. It also applies to the processing of digital personal data outside India, if such processing is in connection with any activity related to the offering of goods or services to data principals — that is, the person to whom the data relates — within India.
Among other things, the law exempts government authorities from the application of provisions of the Bill in the interest of specified grounds such as security of the state, public order, and prevention of offences.
In a first, the law also introduces duties and penalties on the data principal. It says that the data principal will have the right to obtain information about processing, seek correction and erasure of personal data, nominate another person to exercise rights in the event of death or incapacity, and grievance redressal. However, it also adds that if the data principal registers a false or frivolous complaint, or furnishes any false information, they can be punished with a penalty of Rs 10,000.
Similarly, the law also imposes certain obligations on data fiduciaries — defined by it as the people who “determine the purpose and means of the processing of personal data”. This includes the obligation to ensure the accuracy of data, keep data secure, and delete data once its purpose has been met.
Significantly, the bill does not provide for the right to data portability and the right to be forgotten. While the earlier iterations of the law granted the data principal the right to seek compensation from the data fiduciary or data processor, where the data principal has suffered harm, the new law does not regulate harm arising from the processing of personal data.
Also Read: India’s 1st Data Protection Act — what it could have been had proposed amendments been debated
Telecommunications Bill, 2023
The bill seeks to replace the Indian Telegraph Act 1885, the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act 1933, and the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act 1950. Among other things, it requires the central government’s authorisation to establish and operate a telecommunication network, provide telecommunications services, or possess radio equipment.
Telecommunication has been defined as the transmission, emission, or reception of any message by wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. According to the bill, message means any sign, signal, writing, text, image, sound, video, data stream, intelligence, or information sent through telecommunication.
Therefore, telecommunication services may cover under its ambit a wide range of services, including internet-based services, messaging, and calling through platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.
The bill also talks about putting in place a licencing regime for telecom networks and says that auctions will continue to be the preferred norm in assigning spectrum to entities.
The bill also requires telecom service providers to verify the identity of the users through any verifiable biometric-based identification. This has raised privacy-based concerns since biometric information is personal data.
In addition, the law also allows any officer authorised by the central government to search a premise or vehicle, if they have reason to believe that unauthorised telecommunications equipment or network used to commit an offence is kept or concealed.
It further allows interception, monitoring, or blocking of messages or class of messages between two or more people on certain grounds including the security of the state, friendly relations with other countries, prevention of incitement of offences, or public order. It also allows the suspension of telecom services, including internet shutdowns, on similar grounds.
Critics claim the bill extends colonial laws to ensure a digital authoritarian state.
Also Read: Telecommunications Bill 2023 is fit for the digital age. It is legislation shaped by public opinion
The Post Office Bill, 2023
The bill replaces the Indian Post Office Act 1989, and regulates India Post. Among other things, this bill also allows interception of an article transmitted through India Post on specified grounds, including national security, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, emergency, public safety, or contravention of the provisions of the Bill or any other laws. The central government can empower any officer to do so.
The bill has also faced criticism for being arbitrarily continuing provisions of a colonial law. While participating in a debate in Lok Sabha on 13 December, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said over the last decade, it has been seen that this government has, in the guise of “decolonising our minds” and “updating colonial-era laws”, brought in legislation that is equally, if not more, “arbitrary and unreasonable and that more often than not encroaches upon the fundamental rights of countless Indians”.
Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023
On the face of it, this appears to be another law brought in to overturn a Supreme Court judgment passed in May this year.
On 11 May, a five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the elected Delhi government’s power over administrative services in the National Capital Region. The ruling allowed the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government to exercise its executive as well as legislative authority over officers of various services, including those who are not recruited by it and have been allocated to Delhi by the Union of India.
This included the authority to transfer and post officers within the government, frame service rules for them, or undertake any other measure for governance purposes, including passing a law in the legislative assembly.
Just days after this ruling, the central government promulgated an ordinance on the issue. This ordinance created a new statutory authority, the National Capital Civil Service Authority (NCCSA), to make recommendations to the Lieutenant Governor (LG) on the transfers and postings of officials and disciplinary matters.
The body was to comprise the elected Chief Minister of Delhi, and two high-ranking civil servants — the government’s chief secretary and the principal secretary of the home department.
The Delhi government challenged this ordinance in the Supreme Court, and its petition was referred to a Constitution bench on 20 July. That case is still pending.
Meanwhile, the Modi government brought in the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023, to replace its ordinance. The proposed law is to apply retrospectively from 19 May — the date of the ordinance.
The J&K Reorganisation (Second Amendment) Bill, 2023
The bill amends the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019, which bifurcated the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories of Jammu and Kashmir (with legislature) and Ladakh (without legislature). The bill now seeks to reserve one-third of all elected seats in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly for women.
This reservation also will apply to seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
However, like the women’s reservation bill, the provision of this proposed legislation too will come into force only after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken after a census exercise is undertaken.
The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023
Introduced and passed during the Monsoon Session of Parliament, the controversial bill, which received presidential assent in August, amends the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, to make it applicable to certain types of land. It also exempts certain types of land from the ambit of the law, including those that lie within 100 km of India’s borders.
Critics of the law claim that the bill could lead to removing forest land “within a distance of one hundred kilometers along international borders or Line of Control or Line of Actual Control” from the law’s protection.
According to the law, certain kinds of land have been exempted from clearance, including forest land that may be diverted for “strategic linear projects (such as roads or railways) of national importance and concerning national security within 100 km from India’s borders”.
Environmentalists argue that this would effectively mean that the government would be able to build or allow projects in erstwhile protected forests and could even endanger vast swathes of forest land near border areas.
The law also exempts from its ambit land recorded as forest before 25 October 1980 but not notified as a forest and also those which changed from forest-use to non-forest-use before 12 December 1996.
This means that the law redefines the term “forest” under the Indian law and constricts conservation efforts, and is in stark contrast to the earlier law, which extended its protections for clearances to any forest land.
This provision could also fly in the face of a 1996 landmark Supreme Court judgment in the Godavarman case, which established that the provisions of the law must apply to “all forests irrespective of the nature of ownership or classification”. In that ruling, the court said that the word “forest” must be understood according to its dictionary meaning.
In July this year, a group of over 100 former civil servants wrote to Parliament to express their concerns over the amendments, which they feared would breed “the tendency to liberally give away forest land for non-forest purposes”.
In October, a group of former civil servants and conservationists challenged the law before the Supreme Court, which is still hearing the case.
The Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2023
Introduced in Parliament in July, the bill seeks to amend the Cinematograph Act 1952, which made provision for the certification of films and created the Board of Film Certification for such certification. This is the board that certifies whether a film is suitable for universal public exhibition or should restricted to adults.
The original law provided for several types of certificates to be granted to films. This included a ‘U’ certification for exhibition without restriction, ‘UA’ certification for exhibition without restriction but subject to the guidance of parents or guardians for children below 12 years of age, ‘A’ certification, and ‘S’ certificate for exhibition only to members of any profession or class of persons. T
The Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2023, substitutes ‘UA’ category with three more — UA 7+, UA 13+, and UA 16+. It also aims to curb film piracy by providing for a punishment ranging between three months to three years imprisonment for violating the provisions related to unauthorised recording or unauthorised exhibition of films.
While the original law makes the certification valid for 10 years, the bill says that the certificates will now be perpetually valid.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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