Jan Vishwas Bill 2026 decriminalises minor defaults

A fresh decriminalisation Bill introduced in Lok Sabha, replacing the 2025 version withdrawn the same session.

What happened

• The Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Shri Jitin Prasada, introduced the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 in the Lok Sabha on 27 March 2026, after approval by the Union Cabinet.
• The Bill proposes to amend 784 provisions across 79 Central Acts administered by 23 Ministries.
• Of these, it decriminalises 717 provisions to promote Ease of Doing Business, and amends 67 provisions to facilitate Ease of Living.
• It seeks to rationalise more than 1,000 offences, removing outdated and redundant provisions to clean up the regulatory environment.
• The core shift: criminal penalties for minor, technical or procedural defaults are replaced with civil and administrative enforcement — monetary penalties, warnings and graded sanctions.
• The Bill replaces the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025, which was referred to a Select Committee and then withdrawn before this 2026 version was tabled.

Background & context

The Bill belongs to a deliberate, multi-stage decriminalisation programme that the Union Government has pursued since 2023, and it cannot be read in isolation from its predecessors. The animating idea is "trust-based governance": that an honest business or citizen who commits a minor, technical or procedural lapse — a late filing, a missing form, a small labelling error — should not face the threat of imprisonment, a criminal record and years of litigation. Such over-criminalisation, the Government argues, clogs the courts, deters investment and breeds rent-seeking, without any corresponding public-safety gain.

The lineage runs in three steps. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 — the first statute in this family — decriminalised 183 provisions across 42 Central Acts administered by 19 Ministries/Departments. It became the template: convert imprisonment to monetary penalty, insert adjudication machinery, and graduate penalties to the gravity of the default. Building on it, the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025 was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 18 August 2025, proposing amendments to 355 provisions across 16 Central Acts administered by 10 Ministries/Departments. That 2025 Bill was referred to a Select Committee chaired by Shri Tejasvi Surya, which held 49 sittings and submitted its report to the Lok Sabha on 13 March 2026. Crucially, the Committee went beyond the provisions before it: it examined further provisions within the same Acts and recommended decriminalisation across 62 additional Central Acts. Acting on that expanded mandate, the Government withdrew the 2025 Bill and introduced the wider 2026 Bill in its place — which is why the same parliamentary session sees one Bill leave and a larger successor arrive.

The 2026 Bill was preceded by a structured consultative process: Inter-Ministerial Committee meetings, High-Level Committee meetings convened under NITI Aayog, and interactions with industry associations and civil society organisations. The 49 Select Committee sittings on the 2025 Bill fed directly into the design. The reform also sits alongside the broader Ease of Doing Business agenda — the same policy stream that produced the earlier removal of thousands of compliances and the decriminalisation of company-law and environmental offences over the preceding years.

It helps to be precise about what an "amending Bill" of this kind does mechanically. A criminal provision inside a parent Act typically has three parts: the duty (what you must do), the default (what counts as a breach) and the sanction (the punishment). Over-criminalised statutes set that sanction as imprisonment, or imprisonment-or-fine, even for purely procedural breaches. The Jan Vishwas method does not delete the duty — the compliance obligation survives — it rewrites the sanction limb: imprisonment is struck out and replaced with a defined monetary penalty, a warning for a first-time lapse, and a graded scale that rises with repetition or gravity. Alongside, it inserts a forum: an Adjudicating Officer to impose the penalty without a criminal trial, and an Appellate Authority to hear appeals. That is why a single short Bill can touch 79 statutes at once — it is editing the penalty clauses of each, not authoring 79 new laws.

For Prelims

• Full name: Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 — "Jan Vishwas" literally meaning "people's trust / faith of the people".
• Introduced: Lok Sabha, 27 March 2026, by MoS Commerce & Industry Shri Jitin Prasada, after Union Cabinet approval. It is a Government Bill, not a Private Member's Bill.
• Nodal ministry: Ministry of Commerce & Industry (the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, DPIIT, is the usual driver of the Jan Vishwas exercise), but it is an omnibus amending Bill touching 23 Ministries.
• Scale: amends 784 provisions · 79 Central Acts · 23 Ministries; decriminalises 717 (Ease of Doing Business); amends 67 (Ease of Living); rationalises more than 1,000 offences.
• Mechanism: imprisonment replaced by monetary penalties or warnings; graded enforcement (warnings for first-time contraventions); fines made proportionate to the offence.
• Enforcement machinery created: Adjudicating Officers (to decide penalties) and Appellate Authorities (to hear appeals), to give speedy, time-bound disposal while observing natural justice and easing the burden on courts.
• Two named Acts highlighted: the 67 Ease-of-Living amendments include changes under the New Delhi Municipal Council Act, 1994 and the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 — covering municipal taxation and vehicle-related compliance.
• Predecessor family: Jan Vishwas Act, 2023 (183 provisions · 42 Acts · 19 Ministries) → Jan Vishwas Bill, 2025 (355 provisions · 16 Acts; referred to Select Committee under Tejasvi Surya, 49 sittings, report 13 March 2026; withdrawn) → Jan Vishwas Bill, 2026 (this one).
• Consultation: Inter-Ministerial and High-Level Committee meetings under NITI Aayog, plus industry and civil-society inputs.

What it is NOT: It is not a single new Act with its own subject — it is an amending Bill that edits penalty clauses inside dozens of existing laws. It does not decriminalise serious crimes; only minor, technical and procedural defaults are shifted to civil penalties. It is not the same as the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023 (a separate, earlier and smaller statute), nor the withdrawn 2025 Bill. "Jan Vishwas" should not be confused with the Jan Dhan, Jan Aushadhi or Jan Samarth schemes — despite the shared "Jan" prefix, they are unrelated welfare/financial-inclusion programmes, whereas Jan Vishwas is a regulatory-decriminalisation law. And the Adjudicating Officers it creates are administrative, not judicial — appeals lie to Appellate Authorities, not directly to a criminal court.

The full set — the Jan Vishwas decriminalisation family (for "how many / match the pairs"):

• 2023 Act: 183 provisions · 42 Central Acts · 19 Ministries/Departments — the first statute, enacted.
• 2025 Bill: 355 provisions · 16 Central Acts · 10 Ministries — referred to Select Committee (chair: Tejasvi Surya); withdrawn.
• 2026 Bill: 784 provisions · 79 Central Acts · 23 Ministries — 717 decriminalised + 67 Ease-of-Living amendments — introduced 27 March 2026.

Why it matters

The problem the Bill addresses is the accumulated weight of over-criminalisation in Indian statute books. Decades of laws attached imprisonment to lapses that are essentially administrative — a delayed return, an incomplete register, a packaging defect. The consequences were real: a deterrent to entrepreneurship (especially for MSMEs that cannot absorb legal risk), a chilling effect on investment, swollen court dockets, and discretion at the inspector level that invites harassment and corruption. By converting these to monetary penalties decided by Adjudicating Officers and appealable to Appellate Authorities, the State retains its enforcement teeth while removing the threat of jail and a criminal record for honest mistakes.

The reform also signals a wider re-think of the citizen–State relationship: the default posture moves from suspicion (every default is a crime) to proportionality and risk-based regulation (the response should fit the gravity of the lapse). This aligns India's compliance regime with globally accepted principles of proportionate, risk-based enforcement and supports the twin goals it names explicitly — Ease of Doing Business for firms and Ease of Living for citizens. The expected payoffs the Government cites are higher voluntary compliance, lower litigation, greater investment and stronger economic growth. The presence of a Select Committee stage, 49 sittings and the deliberate widening of scope on the Committee's recommendation also matter for a governance reading: it shows the decriminalisation programme being refined through parliamentary scrutiny rather than pushed through unexamined.

For Mains

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