New Delhi: The Union government introduced the Repealing and Amending Bill, 2025, in the Lok Sabha on Monday, which proposes repealing 71 older amendments to major legislations in the country and amending crucial provisions related to succession.
Some of the laws proposed to be repealed among the 71 listed are amendments to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, as well as amendments to the Energy Conservation Act, the 2023 amendments to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act and the Offshore Areas Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act.
The bill also proposed to eliminate the requirement of court-sanctioned probates in presidency towns for the enforcement of wills under the Indian Succession Act, 1925. The proposed law stated that this provision was discriminatory.
The proposed law stated that repealing its listed provisions would not make the amendments null, as these amendments were now part of the base law. For instance, if a provision in the 2015 Arbitration and Conciliation Act amendment is repealed, the amendment remains in effect as it has now been incorporated into the main Act.
The repeal of an amendment does not nullify the amendment, according to a provision in India’s General Clauses Act, which defines all basic legal concepts in Indian jurisprudence.
The proposed law stated that it would remove and amend provisions from the General Clauses Act and the Code of Civil Procedure related to the postal department. Due to the merger of registered post services with speed post services, the bill proposed to allow speed post services to be included in the law.
Additionally, the bill proposed including speed post “acknowledge due” services in the Code of Civil Procedure, which outlines the rules of procedure for civil cases in the country.
The bill proposed to remove section 213 from the Indian Succession Act, 1925. This provision stated that Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Parsis had to secure a probate from a relevant Court to enforce a will of succession. A probate is a court’s order sanctioning the will.
Notably, Muslims and Christians were exempt from this condition.
The bill called section 213 “discriminatory” for this reason, and said “Consequential amendments on omission of section 213 are being made in other provisions of the Act.”
The bill also proposed removing a clause from Section 370 of the Indian Succession Act, which exempted Christians from the requirement of securing a succession certificate. It proposed to remove this clause “for being a relic of the colonial rule, obsolete and redundant”.
This bill follows the government's massive legal reform of the country’s criminal codes. The reforms in criminal codes aimed to remove colonial symbols, enhance administrative efficiency, and increase the effectiveness of criminal courts.
Nearly 6 million civil cases are pending in India’s lower judiciary, while the number of pending criminal cases is about 29 million, according to the government’s National Judicial Data Grid. Inheritance-related matters are a part of civil cases.
