Report No. 60
1.6. Importance of statute law today.-
It is desirable, in this context, to emphasise the importance of statute law today. It was towards the end of the last century, that the present General Clauses Act was enacted; statute law did not then possess, in its volume and range, the importance which it now possesses, though, of course, much of the lawyer's law had been codified in India by that time. Since 1897, the number of statutes and statutory instruments has multiplied every year. As the position stood towards the end of 1971, there were about 700 Central Acts of permanent duration, and the number of statutory instruments issued under these Acts would run literally into thousands. Litigation involving questions of statutory construction, constitute now the bulk of the total litigation in India. It is, therefore, obvious that an enactment which is intended to deal with the process of interpretation of statutes, is now of much greater importance than it could have been in the last century.
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