Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2016-07-05

Consolidation of Core Legislation

- It has become a complicated and difficult task to understand the laws/statutes enacted long ago, due to the frequent amendments made to such legislation. In order to redress this situation, the Ministry of Justice, with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) works on to re-draft five (05) core pieces of legislation in three languages of Sinhala, Tamil and English and to consolidate the same. In considering the statutes of Evidence Ordinance, Criminal Procedure Code and Penal Code which fall under the purview of the five (05) core statutes to be consolidated under this programme, it has been apparent that there may be a potential of misunderstanding of certain words and expressions, by the public who refer such legislation, since certain words and expressions contained in such statutes are totally outdated in the present context. Therefore, the proposal made by Hon. (Dr.) Wijayadasa Rajapaksa, the Minister of Justice, to substitute or revise such words and expressions contained in the said statutes, so as to reflect and suit the contemporary language usage, was approved by the Cabinet.