Springing a surprise, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Mishra Teni, on Monday introduced the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill 2022. The Bill was neither put up for pre-legislative consultation nor indicated in the session’s legislative agenda in Parliament. Seemingly technical, it is a legislative proposal that undermines the privacy of not only persons convicted of crime but also every ordinary Indian citizen as it proposes replacing a law that is over a 100 years old.
What needs scrutiny
Let us first understand why it is being introduced, and what it intends to achieve. The Bill aims to replace the Identification of Prisoners Act 1920 that has been in need of amendment for several decades. Back in the 1980s, the Law Commission of India (in its 87th Report) and the Supreme Court of India in a judgment titled State of U.P. vs Ram Babu Misra had nearly simultaneously suggested the need to amend the statute. The criticism and the need for amendment was predominantly in respect of the limited definition of ‘measurements’ as under that Act. It seems that this is one of the primary issues that the proposed legislation is designed to resolve.
