Jan Vishwas Amendment Bill 2026: How India Is Decriminalising 717 Provisions Across 79 Laws

The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 was introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 27, 2026 by the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Jitin Prasada. The Bill proposes amendments to 784 provisions across 79 Central Acts administered by 23 Ministries. Of these, 717 provisions are to be decriminalised, replacing imprisonment and criminal penalties with civil and administrative enforcement mechanisms. The remaining 67 amendments target improvements to citizen-facing processes. This is the second major decriminalisation exercise under the Jan Vishwas framework, building on the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023 which decriminalised 183 provisions across 42 Central Acts.

The Core Policy Shift: From Imprisonment to Civil Penalties

The central objective of the Jan Vishwas framework is to rationalise the legal consequences attached to minor, technical, and procedural defaults by businesses and individuals. Under the existing statutes, hundreds of provisions impose criminal liability, including imprisonment, for violations that are often administrative in nature: late filing of returns, failure to maintain records in a prescribed format, minor non-compliances with labelling or packaging requirements, and similar defaults that carry no genuine risk to public welfare. The Bill proposes that such provisions shift to a graded civil enforcement model. Under the new structure, a first contravention will typically attract an advisory or a warning. A second contravention will attract a formal warning notice. Criminal penalties, where they are retained at all, will apply only to subsequent, repeated violations or to conduct that involves deliberate fraud or harm.

Scope: Which Laws Are Affected

The Bill spans 79 Central Acts across 23 Ministries, covering a wide range of regulatory domains including commerce and industry, environment, food safety, labour, telecommunications, financial services, and agriculture. Among the specific examples documented in the Bill is the Apprentices Act, 1961, under which an advisory will now be issued for the first contravention, a warning for the second, and a civil penalty for subsequent violations, replacing what was previously a criminal offence. The breadth of coverage signals a government-wide commitment to ease of doing business reform, with the Ministry of Commerce coordinating across ministries to standardise the approach to minor regulatory defaults.

New Enforcement Architecture: Adjudicating Officers and Appellate Authorities

The Bill provides for the appointment of Adjudicating Officers under the affected statutes and the establishment of Appellate Authorities to review their decisions. This creates a structured administrative adjudication mechanism to replace criminal prosecution for covered defaults. The model is designed to enable time-bound and efficient disposal of cases. A business that receives a civil penalty notice will have a defined right of appeal to the Appellate Authority before the order becomes final. This is a significant due process improvement over the present position, where many businesses face the prospect of criminal prosecution and court proceedings for defaults that are technical or inadvertent in nature.

What the Bill Does Not Do

The Bill is not a general amnesty or a weakening of regulatory enforcement. Serious violations involving deliberate fraud, public health risk, environmental harm, or national security remain subject to criminal liability. The decriminalisation exercise is limited to provisions where the underlying conduct is administrative, procedural, or technical. Businesses should not read the Bill as a signal that regulatory compliance obligations have been relaxed. The civil penalties under the new framework may in practice be more consistently enforced than the criminal prosecution route, which has historically been slow and resource-intensive. Regulatory bodies that previously relied on the threat of criminal prosecution as a deterrent may shift towards more active use of civil penalty orders, particularly for repeat violators.

Practical Takeaways

The Bill remains before Parliament and is not yet law. Businesses should monitor its passage and, once enacted, review which of the Acts they are regulated under have been amended. Legal and compliance teams should update their regulatory risk registers to reflect the shift from criminal to civil liability under the covered provisions. For startups and small businesses in particular, the removal of imprisonment risk for technical defaults substantially reduces the personal liability exposure of founders and directors for minor non-compliances. For regulated entities with ongoing prosecutions under provisions targeted by the Bill, the transitional provisions, once the Act is passed, will be relevant to assess whether pending proceedings are affected.