Supreme Court refuses to entertain PILs against new criminal laws

The Supreme Court today refused to entertain two public interest litigation (PILs) petitions that challenged the validity of the three new criminal laws that recently replaced the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Indian Evidence Act [Anjale Patel and Anr v. Union of India and anr; Vinod Kumar Boinapally v. Union of India and ors]..A Division Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan criticised the manner in which both petitions were drafted and suggested that the petitioners do better research if they wished to file their challenge again. "This is a serious issue. What kind of petitions are both of these? ... Please draft it well. This is a serious issue. We cannot enter the domain of Parliament ... Please conduct thorough research on the issues you are raising. You are challenging the constitutional vires of the new laws," Justice Kant remarked.The Court eventually allowed the parties to withdraw their pleas with liberty to refile it."We allow the petitions to be withdrawn with a liberty to file a comprehensive petition on the said issue," the Court said. .The Court was hearing two petitions challenging the new criminal laws, namely the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS, which replaced the IPC), the Bharatiya Nagarik Surakhsa Sanhita (BNSS, which replaced the CrPC) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA, which replaced the earlier Evidence Act). One of the two petitions was filed by two Delhi residents, Anjale Patel and Chhaya. The second petition was filed by Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader Vinod Kumar Boinapally.The first petition called for directions to constitute an expert committee to assess and identify the viability of the three new criminal laws. It also objected to the titles of the three laws, calling them ambiguous and inaccurate as the names of the three laws did not speak about the statute or its motive.This plea also highlighted how the introduction of new criminal laws potentially impacts lawyers in various ways, posing a range of challenges like an increase in workload, complexity, ambiguity, the need for continuing legal education etc.In the second petition, BRS leader Boinapally stated that the new laws were like “old wine in a new bottle” and would have serious ramifications on law and order, life and liberty of people.He argued that while enacting these new criminal laws, all relevant stakeholders, States and UTs, were not consulted.The BRS leader had also contended that certain provisions of the new laws were liable to be declared unconstitutional and void - namely Sections 15, 43(3), 94, 96, 107, 185, 187, 349 and 479 of the BNSS; Sections 113, 152 of BNS; and Section 23 of the BSA..On May 20, a Bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal refused to entertain another petition challenging the validity of the new criminal laws. At the time, the new criminal laws were yet to come into force."Laws are not in force. How can you file such pleas drafted in a casual manner?" the Court had asked petitioner, Vishal Tiwari, while declining the entertain his PIL, which was ultimately withdrawn. A similar plea was dismissed back in February as well, by a Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra..The three new laws came into force on July 1 this year..[Read Live Coverage]