Delhi HC
order @ Online Access to Legislations
Case Name : Union of India Vs Vansh Sharad Gupta
(Delhi High Court)
Appeal Number : W.P (C) 4761/2016
& CM APPl. 22914/2016
Date of Judgement/Order : 25.05.2017
Text
of the High Court Judgment
Today
in Court, learned Amicus Curiae, Mr. Jayant Bhushan, Senior Advocate has handed
over a note which highlights not only the critical shortcomings but also gives
valuable suggestions. The same is taken on record. The aforesaid note is
reproduced herein below:-
“1.
The present matter has brought forth the problems faced by citizens in free
access to accurate and comprehensive sets of laws in India. The availability of
accurate legal texts, at minimal cost, is fundamental to the rule of law and a
basic responsibility of the Government. With the advent of the internet, it is
imperative that the Government make all efforts possible to provide
comprehensive access to legislations and subordinate legislations online. While
efforts have been made in this arena, a lot remains to be done.
2.
Critical shortcomings –
a.
Searchability – Older laws, which usually form the bulwark of the legal system,
are typically uploaded in inaccessible formats like scanned images of pdfs or
unintelligible, unformatted text boxes. This means that machines cannot process
the text without additional effort, and relevant content within these laws is
lost.
b.
Updation – Even though the government is the most authentic source of legal
information, almost all its web portals suffer from content and design flaws.
The laws are often not updated to reflect latest amendments.
c.
Cross-linking – The legal system does not consist of standalone laws. It
consists of an intricate framework of laws, rules, regulations, circulars etc.
which refer to and build on one another. Government websites have not made use
of available tools to make the inter-connections of laws apparent in an
automated, cost-friendly manner.
d.
Representation – Representation of laws on government websites have not
followed user-centric and mobile-friendly approaches. PDFs are not mobile
compatible and websites ignore basic rules of design.
3.
Suggestions
–
a. Development
and adoption of technical standards in the publication of all legislative
documents including rules, regulations, notifications and any other form of
subordinate legislation –
i.
A core component to making
laws more accessible and resourceful is (i) the adoption of a system for
uniquely identifying each individual legislative document and (ii) the adoption
of a standard system of legislative XML1. Many developed nations
like the United States and the United Kingdom have applied such standards to
legislative information.
ii.
Every law should have a unique ID so that each new rule, regulation,
notification etc. can be tagged with the unique ID of the parent law. At the
push of a button, the website can display all new regulations, notifications
etc. in one Not only will this enable citizens to have a complete understanding
of all legal information on a subject in one place, it will enable the
Government to function more efficiently.
iii.
It is imperative to conduct research on adoption of global technical standards
for legislative mark-up in India.
Adapting
a UN accepted standard like Akoma Ntoso2 for Indian laws could
be a potential option. This India specific standard must work for laws at the
Central, State and municipal level and should be applicable to all kinds of
legislative documents. Once such a standard has been developed, all government
departments and other competent authorities should publish legislative
documents using drafting tools which apply such standards. They should also
compile and publish all previous documents (including notifications, circulars
etc.)
b. Subordinate Legislation –
Most laws contain accompanying rules or regulations passed either by the
Central Government or the State Some of these subordinate legislations are
available on the concerned Ministry/Department’s website, but many are not, in
which case one has to conduct an independent search in the e-Gazette. The
e-Gazette search engine is not intuitive and would require familiarity with the
kind of gazette it is published in (weekly or extraordinary gazette) or the
relevant ministry. Similar difficulties apply to notifications as well. Unless
the relevant ministry publishes the notifications, such notifications (which
often amend schedules in an Act or the Rules) are not easily accessible. The
IndiaCode website has a link for subordinate legislation which links to (http://subordinatelegislation.gov.in/) but
as of 24.05.2017, the website is not functional and the scope of that website
is unknown. It is also unlikely that it will enable tagging and
cross-referencing with the parent statutes enabling a holistic view of the
complete law. The scope of the IndiaCode website should be expanded to include
all subordinate legislation including rules, regulations, notifications and
circulars that flow from a particular legislation, in one place.
c.
Time-bound uploading of legislative text – Every legislative document, including
subordinate legislation should be uploaded on the IndiaCode website in a
time-bound manner. Currently, a lot of amendments and subordinate legislations
are not uploaded due to the same remaining pending with the concerned Ministry
for extended periods of time. Guidelines should be developed to ensure timely
updation of legislative Even now, a consolidated Income Tax Act and many other
laws consolidated with recent amendments are not available on the IndiaCode
website. A tracking system mentioned earlier coupled with guidelines mandating
time-bound updation will help avoid such delays.
d.
Priority uploading of
important pre-1947 legislations – While the Law Department is
attempting to upload post 1947 legislations at a rapid pace, it is
understandable that uploading consolidated versions of pre-1947 legislations
may take time. However, consolidated versions of certain pre-1947 legislations
that are of critical importance, should be uploaded on a priority basis in a
time-bound manner. These must include, the Indian Penal Code 1860, Civil
Procedure Code 1908, Negotiable Instruments Act 1881 and other such important
enactments.
e.
IndiaCode platform should be made open to States and other public authorities – IndiaCode should be a platform where
State law departments and other statutory and public authorities, can upload
all state laws and subordinate The laws should themselves be published adopting
the technical standards developed for Central laws mentioned earlier. Such a
system will enable quicker updation of legal information on the platform, as
well as reducing the workload of the Law Department for. updation. In this
regard, it will be immensely useful if the Law Department publish lists of
applicable and unrepealed laws in each State by requesting the same from all
State.
f.
Collage information from
database/portals – At
the movement, a lot of data on legislations and subordinate legislations is
available with the Government onvarious portals. These
includehttp://indiacode.nic.in/,http:// lawmin.nic.in!Legis.htm,
http:!!india.gov.in, http:!!egazette. nic.in. Various ministries publish
rules and notifications on their own websites. The multiplicity of fora to
publish information online creates unnecessary hurdles in streamlining access
to legislative information. Various portals may exist for various reasons, but
the Government should move towards a system where at least one portal has access
to all legislative information in one place and where every competent authority
is mandated to upload such information in a time-bound manner. To that end, the
Government should start collating data from its various portals and publish it
in on IndiaCode and also identify the gaps in the data available and work
towards obtaining that data in a time-bound manner.
g.
Content and Format for a Government Portal on Laws – For a comprehensive resource on
Central and State laws (including subordinate legislation), a review of similar
portals developed in other jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom (legislation.gov.uk)
and Australia (http://www.thelaw. tas.gov.au/index.w3)will be helpful. A
professional third party agency may also be engaged to improve the website
design and functionality.
h.
Grievance redressal –
There should be one nodal officer responsible for addressing grievances from
the public regarding updation and improvement of content on the IndiaCode
website. The officer’s name, email address and telephone number should be
prominently displayed on the website.
This
Court has perused the aforesaid note and is of the opinion that it contains
valuable suggestions which need to be considered at the highest level.
Consequently, this Court directs the Secretary, Legislative Department to
convene a meeting wherein the said note should be considered.
Accordingly,
the Secretary, Legislative Department is directed to invite the Amicus Curiae
as well as his authorised representative for the said meeting. The Secretary
shall also invite all other relevant stakeholders for the said meeting
including senior officials from the NIC, Ministry of Information Technology as
well as Directorate of Printing, Ministry of Urban Development.
Let
the said meeting be convened in the month of July 2017.
The
minutes of the said meeting shall be placed on record two weeks before the next
date of hearing.
List
on 1st September, 2017.
1
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of
rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and
machine-readable. This allows documents to be identified and structured in a
way that both machines and humans can identify. This in turn allows automated
processing of these legislative documents, as well as more sophisticated
applications to be built on top. Ultimately, it broadens and simplifies access
to legal information.
Source | http://taxguru.in
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @
Knowledge Repository
Khaitan
& Co
Upcoming Lecture | ACTREC - BOSLA Annual lecture series (125th
birth anniversary of father of library science, Padmashree Dr. S. R.
Ranganathan) on Saturday,
12th August 2017 at Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education
in Cancer (ACTREC), Kharghar, Navi Mumbai. (Theme | 'MakerSpace')
No comments:
Post a Comment