{"id":189473,"date":"2022-06-08T20:18:01","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T14:48:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=189473"},"modified":"2022-06-08T20:18:46","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T14:48:46","slug":"lets-redesign-the-process-of-pre-legislative-consultation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/lets-redesign-the-process-of-pre-legislative-consultation\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s redesign the process of pre-legislative consultation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Context<\/strong>: In 2014, India\u2019s ministry of law and justice issued a policy on pre-legislative consultation.<\/p>\n

Background<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)<\/strong> issued a set of 12 recommendations on policymaking practices for member and non-member nations.<\/p>\n

Importance of Pre-Legislative Consultation <\/strong><\/h5>\n

It ensures transparency<\/strong> in the legislative process. Further, lawmakers keep in mind the concerns of all affected parties.<\/p>\n

To do so, regulators should offer meaningful opportunities<\/strong> to the public to participate in the legislative process.<\/p>\n

Features of Indian policy<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The Central government should place legislative proposals<\/strong> in the public domain for a period of at least 30 days<\/strong> before they are submitted to the Cabinet<\/strong> for consideration.<\/p>\n

The proposal<\/strong> must be accompanied by a brief note justifying its necessity<\/strong>, its broad financial implications<\/strong>, an assessment of its impact on the environment<\/strong> as well as the fundamental rights<\/strong> and lives<\/strong> and livelihoods of the people.<\/p>\n

Public comments be summarized and placed on the website of the department or ministry concerned. These also had to be included in a note to the Cabinet along with the draft proposal.<\/p>\n

What are the issues?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Most legislative proposals in India do follow this practice, but the consultation itself is no more than a formality today.<\/p>\n

In many instances, the time set aside<\/strong> for consultation is too short<\/strong> to be of any practical consequence,<\/p>\n

The government is under no obligation to justify why a given suggestion<\/strong> was excluded from the final draft.<\/p>\n

Stakeholders have no way to tell whether their suggestion was rejected after due consideration or simply ignored.<\/p>\n

Way Forward<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In order to extract value from pre-legislative consultation<\/strong>, there is a need to redesign<\/strong> the process.<\/p>\n

(1) In the first place<\/strong>, instead of putting a draft legislation, the government should first describe the issues for which legislative solutions are being sought. This will lead to the start of a constructive conversation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The issues for consultation should be put in public domain with a set of questions, to seek responses from the stakeholders.<\/p>\n

The feedback should be taken in a structured manner, ideally through a digital interface.<\/p>\n

(2) The final step would be to prepare a report that lists all the suggestions<\/strong> received and the final decision<\/strong> arrived at on each issue.<\/p>\n

The report should clearly state the reasons for non-acceptance or discarding of the suggestions.<\/p>\n

(3) Thereafter, a draft legislation can be prepared along the lines of the final recommendation.<\/p>\n

(4) Some Good Cases in India<\/strong><\/p>\n

(a) Telecom Regulatory Authority of India<\/strong> Model<\/strong>: All its recommendations are a result of a process exactly like mentioned above. Therefore, the TRAI reports are highly regarded policy papers in India.<\/p>\n

(b) The Justice Srikrishna Committee on data protection<\/strong> also used a similar process. It sought inputs from the stakeholders before making recommendations.<\/p>\n

(5) In addition to the government\u2019s approach for accommodating viewpoints of the stakeholder, the stakeholders should also approach such an exercise constructively<\/strong>. They need to realize that policy-makin<\/strong>g is an exercise in compromise.<\/strong> All their demands during negotiations cannot come on final papers, otherwise the process will become unfortunate and counter-productive.<\/p>\n

Source<\/strong>: The post is based on an article \u201cLet\u2019s redesign the process of pre-legislative consultation<\/strong>\u201d published in the Live Mint<\/strong> on 7th<\/sup> June 2022<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Context: In 2014, India\u2019s ministry of law and justice issued a policy on pre-legislative consultation. Background In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued a set of 12 recommendations on policymaking practices for member and non-member nations. Importance of Pre-Legislative Consultation It ensures transparency in the legislative process. Further, lawmakers keep in… Continue reading Let\u2019s redesign the process of pre-legislative consultation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10501],"class_list":["post-189473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-live-mint","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704953392},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}