I understand the meaning of repealed sections. Does the section identified as "omitted" mean that this particular section was not meant to be in the act? If so, why do official texts of the act mention its number and put the word omitted?
Edit: Screenshot of the text of the Representation of People's Act 1951 (Govt of India)
It is a bit unclear why that version says "omitted". The Indian Legislature has a copy of The Representation of the People Act, 1951, where in the Arrangement of Sections listing it says "168. [Repealed.]", and the content of that section is
- [Special provisions with respect to Rulers of former Indian States.] Rep. by the Rulers of Indian States (Abolition of Privileges) Act, 1972 (54 of 1972), s. 4 (w.e.f. 9-9-1972).
We would need to know your source for that text to understand why it says "Omitted" in your Contents section. In the Abolition of Privileges Act, §4 the text reads "Section 168 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, shall be omitted". §43-44 of the 1951 Act was also eliminated by The Representation Of The People (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1956, and is also currently listed as being "Repealed". The text of the 1956 act says
- Removal of disqualifications.- (1) Every disqualification for membership of Parliament or of the Legislature of a State incurred by any person under the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (43 of 1951 ) (hereinafter referred to as the principal Act) before the commencement of the Representation of the People (Second Amendment) Act, 1956 , (27 of 1956 ) for failure to lodge a return of election expenses as required by clause (c) of section 7 of the principal Act is hereby removed.
(2) Every disqualification for membership of Parliament or of the Legislature of a State or for voting at an election incurred by any person under the principal Act before the commencement of the Representation of the People (Second Amendment) Act, 1956 , for any illegal practice or for any corrupt practice, other than the corrupt practice of bribery or undue influence is hereby removed.
You might look at your version of the law to see what it says about §43-44 (repealed? removed? omitted?). It appears to not be legally significant, and probably arose by the codifiers who assembled the codified version of the various acts (who also added the footnotes). Presumably at one point it was decided to write "omitted" in the contents to match the wording of the repealing act, but the current version uniformly identifies repealed sections as "repealed", when the wording of the particular act means "this is repealed".
In your example it probably means that no section 168 was ever passed. Perhaps it was included in a draft of the law and was removed during the process of refining the law in the legislature. Perhaps the drafter thought an extra section would be needed for some purpose, but the need did not come to pass. Perhaps the drafter simply made an error in numbering, and 169 should have been 168, but this was not noticed until after the law was passed, and other sections refereed to 169 and later sections by number, so that changing all the references would be tedious and error-prone.
In any of those cases "168 [Omitted]" is used to show that 168 was not left out by a printing error, there is no section 168 in the law, although there is a 169.
