The Bhartiya Nyay Sanhita VS The Indian Penal Code - Sanatan Goyal

All the insights that I have proposed in this article are a learning I gained from being the Chairman of An All India Political Parties Meet (AIPPM) that had this very topic as its agenda, and therefore would like to share them. 

The Bhartiya Nyay Sanhita which has come to replace the century old Indian Penal Code inflicts mixed feeling amidst the people of Bharat. In the context of the decolonization of contemporary Bharat, the novel Justice Code of India introduces the most perceptible change, starting with its very name. The Indian Penal Code, which etymologically translates as the Bhartiya Dand Vidhaan, was a code for punishment rather than justice. In contrast, the Bhartiya Nyay Sanhita pledges to deliver solemn justice, not just punishment, to the people of India.

Now even though I do appreciate this new revelation in the judicial system of India, I do believe that these new changes will impact the judicial system of India in different ways. Despite the use of more elementary terms and more liberal and accepting rules for example the accommodation of transgenders in this new code, this change only contributes to the already deficient pace of the Indian Judicial system.

With this new code of conduct established, the lawyers are definitely going to find it hard to cope with this new system and that is just going to contribute to the pending cases in India.

Now an argument that may be proposed against this point is that the new code is pretty similar to the old one and therefore the lawyers won't have a hard time, but this raises the question of the purpose of the new code.

If this new code is indeed similar, then what was the point of introducing it? The way that this code should’ve been implemented was to adopt a slow and steady implementation by starting with changing a few important laws in the IPC that contribute to the betterment of the people of India and establish sovereignty rather than reflecting foreign rule. This wouldn’t only have been easy for the lawyers but would give the room to change the Code up to a greater extent instead of making minute changes here and there to rush to give out the entire code at once.

Coming to the controversial sections of the BNS, for instance the sedition laws, What I believe is that the use of “Acts endangering sovereignty unity and integrity of India” as a guise for “acts against the government” is still misleading. The sedition laws in my opinion make no sense, due to myriads of factors. Of course, the primary one being the Article 19A of the Indian Constitution which accommodates freedom of expression and then the addition of the clause of, the statement made needing to be false under the Defamation clause of the Bhartiya Nyay Sanhita, it becomes preposterous for sedition to exist in the New Justice code.

In conclusion, the Novel Bhartiya Nyay Sanhita indeed does contribute to the array of de-colonization of Bharat, but only to some extent. The implementation and the changes made, in fact do not bring about a pivoting change to the old code therefore not being as effective in the revelation of embracing sovereign laws.

- Sanatan Goyal