Now, govt schemes to come with sunset date

NEW DELHI: From now on, new government schemes will come with a ' sunset' clause, a date on which they will cease to exist.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, while presenting the Union Budget today, said, "To improve the quality of government expenditure, every new scheme being sanctioned by government will have a sunset date."

He also said all schemes sanctioned will also come out with an "outcome review" to find out who it actually helped the intended beneficiaries.

Often, schemes introduced by one government are scrapped by the other, leading to political slugfest.

Putting a 'sunset clause' in laws and schemes has been widely debated. The Law Commission had recently recommended putting a sunset clause in Appropriation Acts to ensure they automatically get repealed after their purpose is served.

It said while studying the issue, the Commission found that a large number of Appropriation Acts passed during the past several years in reality have lost meaning but continue to be part of the statute books.

"It is common knowledge that Appropriate Acts are intended to operate for a limited period of time... those Appropriation Acts that are older than certain date, say 10 years, may be repealed. This itself would result in the repeal of more than 600 laws," the September, 2014 report had said.

It said Australia has a system where Appropriation Acts are repealed automatically as there is a 'sunset clause' attached to them.