The government is moving to scrap more than two dozen Acts that have remained non-functional for years. The Nepal Law Commission, the statutory body responsible for making recommendations to the cabinet and ministers on promulgating and amending laws, is working at it, because it has found that those laws have no relevance. The commission has begun work after consulting a number of authorities. The laws that are likely to be axed include three ship-related laws, the existence of which in a landlocked country may indeed strike one as strange, but, perhaps, these had been enacted with an eye to future river shipping. Some of the laws date back to the days of King Mahendra. According to the commission, the other ‘irrelevant’ laws include the Royal Service Act 1973, State Court Abolition Act 1960, National Assembly Member Election Act 1991, Foreign Investment Tax Act 1962, and Public Procurement Act 2007. Besides, the commission is working on amendments to about a dozen laws that are in use only in parts. The small relevant portions of such outdated laws are to be merged into other laws.

The existence of useless laws makes the legal jungle unnecessarily dense, whereas the objective should obviously be simplification to the extent possible. Such non-functioning laws include those that once served a useful purpose, and with the passage of time, their purpose no longer existed. Some other laws were not useful even at the time of their promulgation, such as those related to shipping. And there also exist laws the most parts of which have long ceased to be operative. Still others have outlived their utility because of the political and economic changes in the country. There have also been laws that were not brought abreast, in letter and spirit, of the constitutional changes in the country, after the promulgation of the 1990 constitution and the present interim constitution.

In this light, the law commission or any government in Nepal has often not been up to date with law amendment or promulgation. However, the current belated effort is in the right direction. Laws have also been brought into being merely as fads or as populist moves by those in power at various times. For instance, the Social Behaviour (Reform) Act that was enacted more than three decades ago has been far oftener been breached than respected; in fact, it has never been observed, and those who made the law or those who were supposed to enforce it were the first to violate it in broad daylight, as, for instance, in observing the restrictions on expenditure on social occasions like marriage. Only those laws should be made or retained that the state means to enforce. Otherwise, the existence of irrelevant laws would give the public the impression that there is some significant flaw in the justice system, and this situation would compromise the practice of the rule of law. The practically ‘dead’ laws have also at times given unscrupulous law-enforcers the opportunity to beat citizens with the stick of law. To the extent that the existing laws are not enforced, the state’s authority would seem to have eroded.