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How a Bill becomes Law
Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment
- New Farm Laws, 2020: In year 2020, the government passed three farm laws - called agri reform laws - in the Parliament, in the middle of a raging pandemic. That started a chain reaction of farmer protests in some states. Then the government announced the three contentious farm laws will be on hold for one to one-and-a-half years.
- Law coming into force: The question is - does a law automatically come into force after the bill is passed by the parliament? Parliament indeed has the power to make a law and to remove it from the statute books. Over the years, Parliament has repealed several laws & there are precedents where after it has been passed, it has not been in force for several years. Passing a particular bill does not mean that it will start working from the next day.
- Three crucial steps:
- First - the President giving his or her assent to the bill & most of them receive assent in a few days. The Article 111 of the Constitution specifies that the President can either sign off on the bill or withhold his consent and rarely he withholds his assent to the bill. The last time it happened was in 2006 when President APJ Abdul Kalam refused to sign a bill protecting MPs from disqualification for holding an office of profit. If a bill is sent to Parliament for reconsideration & if Parliament sends it back to the President, he or she has no choice but to approve it. In 1986, President Zail Singh made use of a loophole in the Constitution which does not specify a time limit for the President to approve a bill. A bill which was criticised for violating the privacy of personal correspondence was sent to him & he decided not to take any action on the bill until his term ends. President Ram Nath Kovind signed the three farm bills into law within a week of their passing in September 2020.
- Second - The next step is deciding the date on which the law comes into effect & in many cases Parliament delegates power to government to determine this date. The bill states that the law “shall come into force on such date when government may by notification in the Official Gazette appoint & different dates may be appointed for different provisions of Act”. So, the Parliament passed the Recycling of Ships Act in December 2019 & in October 2020 government brought Section 3 of the law into force. This section empowers the government to designate an officer to supervise all ship recycling activities in India. How is that date of implementation decided? A bill specifies the exact date on which it will come into effect & bills which replace ordinances mostly do that. In such cases, the bill sets the date on which the President signed the ordinance as the day the law will come into force. Similarly the three farm bills replacing their ordinances came into force on June 5, 2020. But there are also instances when the government does not bring a law into force for many years. The National Environment Tribunal Act was never brought into force which were passed in 1995 and cleared by the President.
- Third - A bill passed by Parliament is the outline of a law & to come into effect, individuals need to be recruited or given the power to administer it. The implementing ministry also needs to finalise forms to gather information and provide benefits or services & these day-to-day operational details are called rules and regulations. The Parliament gives the government the responsibility of making them & these regulations are critical for the functioning of law. In the case of three farm laws, the government has made some rules in October 2020. If the government does not make rules and regulations, a law or parts of it will not get implemented & Benami Transactions Act of 1988 went unimplemented due to absence of regulations.The Parliament has recommended that the government has to make rules within six months of passing a law but parliamentary committees observed that this recommendation is breached. The government not only has the power to make rules but can also suppress rules made by it earlier.
- Summary: Thus, practically speaking, there are ways a government can decide to put any new law on hold, indefinitely. In cases where serious conflicts arise, it may be advisable to change some parts of laws to alleviate concerns.
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