Why retrospective legislation?

By Vijay Kumar

The theory that emerges is that almost every retrospective legislation is with the lofty aim of protecting the guilty. The babus who have made a bad law with their poor drafting skills cannot bear the beating from the judiciary. Most of them believe that they are the law makers endowed with great skills as proved by the few questions they answered while writing the civil services examination and if the courts are not good enough to understand their language, they, poor ones, have no other go except to bring in retrospective legislation to protect the interests of this nation - you may also read their own interests. They are capable of convincing any Finance Minister and here party affiliations do not matter. The FM's job is to protect the bureaucracy by getting these retrospective laws passed and even a bureaucrat turned politician Finance Minister cannot escape.

Somebody forgot to notice that there was no provision for lapsing credit; no provision to levy Service tax on the receiver; that the rules were not saved and this somebody will always be protected while the unsuspecting beneficiary of their incompetence will one day be made to pay a big price. It is proved beyond doubt that retrospective legislation is so much taken for granted that even the retrospective amendments are not properly drafted. The ITC ordinance is no exception as was pointed out by us - it leaves out a month!

The point is when others do it, it is called loot, and when you do it?