A Consolidating Statute is a type of legislation that collects all existing statutory provisions on a particular subject—which may be scattered across various different Acts and amendments—and combines them into a single, unified, and comprehensive enactment.
The primary purpose is to simplify the law by making it more accessible and "tidying up" the legislative landscape without necessarily changing the underlying legal principles.
Landmark Case Reference
In Chapple v. Purday (1845), it was established that when a statute is purely a consolidating one, the court should lean toward the interpretation that preserves the existing law rather than one that creates a new legal effect.
In Ravulu Subba Rao v. CIT (1956), the Supreme Court of India noted that a consolidating Act should be interpreted by looking at its own language first, and the history of the previous Acts should only be used if there is a genuine doubt or ambiguity.
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