To infuse new life commensurate with the emerging requirements of governance into the system, aimed at delivering on ground better results, Governments keep reviewing the prevalent laws to find the areas where amendments were earnestly required .If the circumstances warranted , new laws are enacted and new provisions incorporated with more scope for meeting the desired ends with better outcome.
We have a list of such 15 fresh laws which were enacted during the tenure of the current Governor’s rule aimed at bettering the administrative system in various areas, all in the interests of the public. It is understandable that for every new law, requisite rules have got to be made, a supporting mechanism built and the same widely circulated for proper implementation. On close scrutiny of the fate of these ‘new’ laws, it is disheartening to observe that the post legislative exercise was chosen, perhaps, to be optional and hence not required to be undertaken. It has a few ramifications. First, absolutely not feeling obliged as senior public servants to feel eager and serious to do the most important job of framing rules. Second, the very purpose of the entire exercise of amending or enacting fresh laws getting defeated. Third , certain interests and motives being the influencing elements in not allowing the new laws coming into operation and last but not the least, full confidence and ingrained belief that such dereliction would go unpunished and perhaps rewarded in future once the popular Government was voted to power.
We are constrained to view the scenario in this perspective as we do believe that the present era belongs only to accountability and responsibility and any compromise , wilful and deliberate, was going to boomerang in the very near future, as the times are fast approaching in this fashion. Jammu and Kashmir state cannot afford to adopt such an approach in sensitive legislative matters. It may not be an overstatement of the fact that much more than anything, what we require in this state is more of follow-up, monitoring, reminding and tracking, we are afraid, to the extent of policing in state departments as none of them has so far forwarded Draft Rules to the Department of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs.
The Heads of the concerned Departments, perhaps, do not keep themselves abreast of the developments going around as that culture of knowing and sharing information about the working of the Government and the administration is still in its infancy . If it would not have been so, at least they could have learnt about how promptly Jammu and Kashmir High Court did its job of preparing the relevant rules of one of such laws, viz Jammu and Kashmir Family Courts Act , 2018 in consultation with the Law department .
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