The parliamentary standing committee for home affairs on Monday adopted the draft report on the three bills that seek to overhaul the criminal law architecture of the country, wrapping up the legislative scrutiny exercise within less than three months. All the Opposition members on the committee were expected to submit dissent notes in the next 24 hours.

While the Opposition MPs have different issues with the three bills — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023,
and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill (BSB), 2023 — a common refrain relates to the
haste with which they have been scrutinised by the panel, which includes three former police officers, all from the BJP.

Sources maintained that at least two of the three former police officers had reservations about certain provisions in the three bills. The third retired police officer on the committee is the chairman, Brij Lal.

The two DMK MPs on the committee have from the very beginning of the legislative scrutiny sought the renaming of the three bills, with Dayanidhi Maran pointing out that they fall foul of Article 348 of the Constitution which mandates that all proceedings in the Supreme Court and the high courts will be in English.

The BNS seeks to replace the Indian Penal Code, 1860, the BNSS is to substitute for the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898, and the BSB is being brought in place of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. Not just the members from south India, even their counterparts from the north had trouble reading the names of the bills, introduced in Parliament on the last day of the monsoon session on the premise of removing colonial vintage provisions.

While some of the 19th-century provisions have indeed been changed as in the case of the BNS dropping the provision on unnatural sex and adultery, the sedition law has been brought back through the bill replacing the CrPC. Introducing the bills, home minister Amit Shah had said the contentious sedition provision — Section 124A of the IPC — was being dropped. But, a closer reading of the three bills by legal experts found it being routed back in through the BNSS.

The committee finalised the draft report over 12 meetings: Monday's was the 13th in a little over two months. The report was to have been adopted on October 27 but the ruling party backed down because of stiff resistance from the Opposition MPs and also because of the delay in circulating the Hindi translation of the reports.

Several domain experts were heard during the course of the deliberations but the Opposition is upset with the failure to make this exercise more representative of the diversity of opinion available in the country. Also, their request for the committee to visit state capitals to draw out opinion on such a major overhaul in a domain that is technically a state subject went unheeded.