The parliamentary panel on home affairs, which was to adopt on Friday reports on three bills that look to overhaul the country’s criminal jurisprudence, deferred the exercise amid resistance from Opposition members who have repeatedly questioned the haste in wrapping up the legislative scrutiny.

The next meeting has been scheduled for November 6. With the numbers stacked in the BJP’s favour on the panel, the Narendra Modi government appears confident of going ahead with the criminal law overhaul during its current term.

This was evident from home minister Amit Shah’s comments at the passing-out parade of IPS probationers at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy in Hyderabad earlier in the day.

Addressing the event, he said the government had placed before Parliament three new criminal laws that represent watershed changes from the provisions of three British-era laws: CrPC, IPC and the Evidence Act.

Shah said the draft laws were being studied by a parliamentary committee and that they would be passed soon and become the basis of India’s criminal justice system.

On Thursday evening, the BJP had reached out to at least two Opposition members of the panel, who are from different parties, and indicated the adoption of the draft reports would be deferred to allow members more time to read them.

In an apparent attempt to create a perception of being accommodative, the BJP asked the two Opposition members to suggest a date that suited them for passing the report.

Sources said that since the Hindi translations of the draft reports on the three bills had been circulated among the panel members only on Thursday afternoon, the BJP seemed to have anticipated being caught out on a technicality and decided to defer their adoption.

On Friday morning, ahead of the panel meeting, Trinamul member Derek O’Brien had apparently written to panel chairperson Brijlal urging him “to stop bulldozing these bills for short-term electoral gain”.

He also urged Brijlal to seek more time from the Rajya Sabha Chairperson for tabling the reports, given the scale of the proposed criminal law overhaul.

Last weekend, Congress leader and former home minister P. Chidambaram had written to Brijlal seeking more time to study the draft reports, and questioned the haste in adopting them.

In a letter written on October 22, he had underlined that he had received the drafts the previous day with the information that they would be adopted at the next meeting of the panel, scheduled for October 27.

He questioned the hurry in scheduling the adoption of the draft reports, given that the next session of Parliament was still several weeks away.

The Opposition members are all expected to submit dissent notes since they do not have the numbers to stop the adoption of the reports.

The three bills were tabled on the last day of the monsoon session of Parliament in August and referred to the standing committee with the directive that it table the report in the winter session.

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Bill looks to replace the Indian Penal Code, 1860; the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) Bill comes in place of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1898; and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill is a substitute for the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

According to the government, the key changes proposed include the repeal of the sedition law (Section 124A of the IPC). However, legal experts say the colonial-era law has been brought back through Section 150 of the BNS Bill.

The BNS Bill also drops the provisions against “unnatural” sex and adultery, which the Supreme Court had diluted or struck down.