Report_38th Annual Dr. Ramanadham Memorial Lecture (October 2023)
Every year PUDR organizes Dr. Ramanadham memorial lecture on a specific theme and its impact on democratic rights. The 38th Annual Ramanadham lecture was delivered on 14 October 2023, on The Proposed Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita And Democratic Rights. In August 2023, three new Bills- Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023- were tabled in the Parliament seeking to replace the existing Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), and Indian Evidence Act of 1872, respectively. While the bills claimed to replace the colonial codes with ‘Bharatiya’ legislations in the name of substituting punishment with justice, majority of the provisions in the new codes were the same. Some new provisions were introduced which appeared to significantly infringe on the existing liberties of the people and disregarded the existing rights jurisprudence evolved in India post-independence.
Against this background, PUDR organized and invited Anup Surendranath to deliver the lecture. He is Professor of Law and the SK Malik Chair Professor on Access to Justice at National Law University, Delhi. At NLU Delhi, Professor Surendranath is also the Founder and Executive Director of Project 39A (a criminal justice programme).
The lecture was delivered in October when only the first version of the new criminal bills had been released to the public. The bills were subsequently referred to a Parliamentary Standing Committee which produced its report on 10th November 2023, after which the bills were amended and passed by both houses of the Parliament in December 2023. The Acts then received presidential assent on 25th December 2023 and the Government of India released a gazette notification dated 24th February 2024 stating that the laws would come into force from 1st July 2024. Some of the provisions discussed in this lecture have undergone specific changes, including a change in the serial order. The final sections under which the provisions appear in the Acts have been indicated at relevant places in the text of the lecture produced in this report, to direct the reader to codes. For an analysis of the changes between the first version of the Bills and the laws that were ultimately passed by Parliament, reference may be made to Project 39A’s, Bharatiya Nyaya (Second) Sanhita Bill, 2023, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha (Second) Sanhita Bill, 2023, and the Bharatiya Sakshya (Second) Bill, 2023: Analysis of Key Changes
PUDR released a report, Fettering People’s Rights, examining the select provisions of the BNS from a civil liberties perspective in January 2024. The analysis included comments on many of the provisions discussed in the Ramanadham lecture too. PUDR, subsequently brought out an updated version of the report in June 2024 OF LAW, JUSTICE AND PEOPLE: An Analysis of Selected Provisions in the New Criminal Codes, 2023, which extended its analysis to a select provisions in the BNSS too and tracked the developments building to the enforcement of the codes. The report can be accessed on the PUDR website.
