BackModi seeks end to ‘jungle of laws’ that slows administration
Modi's call comes against backdrop of Law Commission suggesting repeal of 72 obsolete statutes immediately in an interim report
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Bangalore: In a speech heard by a crowd of a few thousand in the parking lot of Bangalore’s old airport, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for an end to “the jungle of laws" that he said tended to slow administration.
“If the country has to function, if the government has to walk along a straight road, then we will have to clear the jungle of laws," Modi said.
“We have five to 10 laws on one single issue, laws which are over 100, over 150 years, over 50 years (old), and one interprets it the way he wants and stops work."
Modi’s call came against the backdrop of the Law Commission suggesting the repeal of 72 obsolete statutes immediately in an interim report aimed at simplifying and streamlining the country’s laws.
On his first visit to Bangalore, a city facing problems dealing with its garbage, after becoming Prime Minister, Modi focused his speech also on the need for cleanliness and sanitation.
Modi spoke about how his first order of business as prime minister was cleaning up the house. “Pehle janata ne safai ki. Ab hum kar rahe hai (The public cleaned up first. Now, we are doing it.)," Modi said in an apparent reference to the ouster of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in the general election.
He said that on 2 October, Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, he himself would go out with a broom to sweep dirt and asked of citizens a 100 hours of their time every year to keep India clean.
The government is to launch a ‘Clean India’ campaign on that day. Sanitation was a subject that Modi also focused on in his Independence Day speech.
Other than the oblique reference to the UPA’s ouster in the general election, the prime minister kept his speech non-political on a visit to the capital of a state ruled by the Congress.
“Today in Bangalore, he was more prime ministerial that partisan," said Sandeep Shastri, pro-vice chancellor of Jain University, adding that it was probably because “Karnataka is not immediately politically significant".
PTI contributed to this story.
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