BEFORE he plunged into the thick of the Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, Union Home Minister Amit Shah made a surprise appearance at a workshop organised by the Gujarat Assembly recently. The subject was “legislative drafting”, and Shah was among the main speakers.

Shah cited the abrogation of Article 370 by the Narendra Modi government as an example of how to plan for a law and draft it. Despite the historic importance of the legislation, the senior leader pointed out, the fact was that it was a temporary provision and hence could be removed by a simple majority. There was no need for a constitutional amendment, which would have required a two-third majority, Shah pointed out.

While a majority of the Opposition MLAs did not attend Shah’s session, calling it “political” as the day also marked his birthday, some attended the inaugural session of what was the first such workshop on legislative drafting by the Gujarat Assembly.

Notably, it came on the heels of at least four legislation / Bills floated by the BJP Gujarat government which were either withdrawn following protests or challenged in courts.

Of them, the most significant was the Gujarat Cattle Control (Keeping and Moving) in Urban Areas Bill, 2022, seeking to criminalise stray cattle on public roads. The Bill proposed to licence, regulate and prohibit stray cattle movement in urban areas of the state – that is, municipal corporations and municipalities – while mentioning the “threat” they posed to those riding two-wheelers. It had provisions to impose penalties in case of a violation, including the registration of a criminal case.

The Bill was passed after a six-hour debate in the state Assembly in March 2022. Soon after, protests broke out by the cattle-rearing Maldharis, an OBC group.

Ahead of the December elections, the BJP did not want to risk the legislation. Eventually, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel withdrew the Bill in September 2022.

Two other Acts passed in the Gujarat Assembly – Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime Act, 2015, and Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2021 – have been challenged, with petitions pending before the Gujarat High Court and Supreme Court, respectively.

Incidentally, the earlier forms of both the Bills were floated by the Gujarat government under Narendra Modi as CM. But then too, the legislation were passed by the Assembly but failed to get clearance.

The first, passed in 2003, was then called the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime (GUJCOC). Its stringent provisions meant it failed to get presidential clearance thrice.

Then, in 2006, the Gujarat government brought the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Bill, 2006, to amend the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003.

The amended Bill sought to make specifications in the category of “conversion” by stating that “the provisions shall not apply to inter-denomination conversion of the same religion”. The Buddhist and Jain communities objected to this since the Bill construed Jainism and Buddhism as denominations of Hindu religion.

The then Gujarat governor Nawal Kishor Sharma returned the Bill for reconsideration of the government, and it was eventually withdrawn in 2008.

The provisions of the Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime Act, passed in 2015, which have been challenged in the High Court, include its applicability with retrospective effect, stringent bail conditions including no anticipatory bail and admissibility of confessions made before police officials in a court of law.

The Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2021, also stuck in court, seeks to prohibit religious conversion by unlawful means, especially where “women are lured to marriage for the purpose of religious conversion”. Certain provisions of the Act were stayed by a Division Bench of the Gujarat High Court, and the same has been challenged in the Supreme Court by the Gujarat government.

A fourth legislation passed by the Gujarat Assembly which was challenged in the High Court is the Gujarat Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act, 2020. In May 2024, the court upheld the constitutional validity of the law, which retrospectively criminalises ‘land grabbing’ of both public and private property, puts the burden of proof on the person accused of land grabbing, and prescribes a minimum sentence of 10 years for violations.

The session addressed by Shah, who was a minister in the Gujarat government under Modi, began with a video showing clips from his time in the state Assembly. He focused his address on how to avoid judicial setbacks in law-making, with a number of suggestions for the legislators and government officials drafting the Bills.

The skill of legislative drafting was “very important, but going extinct”, he said, adding that those responsible should devise laws with “clarity on the objectives” without leaving behind any grey areas.

He said, “The more clarity with which the Legislature transforms its objectives into law, the lesser the grey areas. Lesser the grey, lesser the (chance of) intervention of the judiciary.”

Shah went on to say that it was true that the lines between the Judiciary, Executive and Legislature were getting blurred, and said the main reason for this was “poor drafting of laws”.

For the workshop, the Assembly Secretariat invited all sitting and former MPs/MLAs, former speakers / deputy speakers and ex-chief ministers of Gujarat. However, the opposition Congress skipped the part addressed by Shah.

CLP leader Amit Chavda said, “I attended the inaugural session, which was for officials. But the other event seemed to have been organised for political reasons, for Amit Shah’s birthday, and so we did not attend it.”