General Clauses Act, 1897

The General Clauses Act is not about any single topic -- it is a foundational interpretation law that supplies standard definitions and default rules of construction used across all federal laws in Pakistan, so that individual Acts don't need to repeat common definitions or rules every time. Section 3 defines a long list of terms used throughout Pakistani legislation, such as 'abet' (borrowing the meaning from the Pakistan Penal Code), 'act', and 'affidavit'; many of the historical entries (like the old colonial-era terms) have since been omitted through later amendments, as shown in the extensive footnotes.

One of the Act's most practically important provisions is Section 6, which governs what happens when a law is repealed: unless a contrary intention appears, a repeal does not revive anything that was not already in force, does not undo the law's past operation, does not affect rights or liabilities already acquired or incurred under it, does not wipe out penalties already incurred, and does not stop ongoing investigations, legal proceedings, or remedies connected to the old law from continuing as if it had never been repealed. Section 7 deals with reviving a previously repealed law.

Sections 9 to 13 fix everyday interpretive rules: how to compute time periods and measure distances, and -- notably -- that words importing the masculine gender include females, and words in the singular include the plural, unless the context of a particular law says otherwise. Sections 14 to 19 clarify how powers of appointment work: for example, Section 16 states that a power to appoint someone to a position includes the power to suspend or dismiss them, unless the law says otherwise.

Sections 20 to 24 explain how to interpret rules, orders, and bye-laws made under other laws (for instance, that the power to make a rule includes the power to amend or cancel it). Sections 30 and 31 extend all these interpretive rules to Ordinances and to Orders made by the President, not just Acts of Parliament.

This is an extremely old law (1897), and while it remains a working reference tool that is cited constantly across Pakistani law, many of its individual definitions have been repealed or replaced over the decades -- the source text used here is heavily annotated with amendment footnotes going back to 1903 and beyond, so any specific definition should be checked against the current official text.