The Government of India on November 7 constituted the Law Commission of India with Justice (retd) Rituraj Awasthi, former Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court, at its chairperson.
- The other five members on the panel would be former Kerala High Court judge Justice K T Sankaran, M Karunanithi, and law professors Anand Paliwal, D P Verma, and Raka Arya.
- The Commission headed by Justice Awasthi is the 22nd Law Commission of India.
- An official release at the time of Cabinet clearance had said the Commission would have a tenure of three years from the date of publication of the Order of Constitution in the Official.
- The tenure of the 21st Law Commission, which was headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice B S Chauhan, came to an end on August 31 2018.
About Law Commission of India
- The Law Ministry describes the Law Commission of India as a non-statutory body that is constituted by a notification of the Government of India, with definite terms of reference to carry out research in the field of law.
- The Commission makes recommendations to the Government (in the form of Reports) as per its terms of reference.
- The Law Commission was first constituted in 1955, and has so far submitted 277 reports.
- After Mr. M.C. Setalvad, the then Attorney-General of India, was appointed as the first Chairperson of the first Law Commission of India, 18 more jurists, including former Supreme Court judge Justice H.R. Khanna, the lone dissenter in a five-member Bench that heard the habeas corpus case in ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla case during the Emergency rule, have donned the role of its head.
- Its recommendations are not binding upon the government. However, it is estimated that about 45 per cent of its recommendations have been acted upon or made into laws.
- According to the Law Ministry’s website, the “Law Commission of India provides excellent thought provoking and vital review of the laws in India”.
