Jan Vishwas (Amendment Of Provisions) Act, 2026

Policy Update

Paridhi Passi

Background

Before this reform began, India’s statute books contained thousands of provisions where relatively harmless lapses, such as a missed filing deadline, an incorrect entry in a register, or a delayed renewal, could technically expose a citizen or a business owner to criminal prosecution and even jail time. Many of these provisions dated back several decades, several tracing back to colonial-era rules or the licence-raj period, and had never been reviewed in light of changing economic conditions. This created what policymakers described as a climate of unnecessary fear, particularly for small businesses and ordinary citizens who had no intention of committing any real wrongdoing.

The Jan Vishwas Act, 2023 was introduced to address this gap directly, with the broader aim of improving ease of doing business and living. It amended 42 Central Acts spread across 19 different ministries and departments, and decriminalised 183 provisions in total. Rather than scrapping these provisions altogether, the Act converted them from criminal offences into civil ones, meaning offenders would now face monetary penalties determined by designated authorities instead of facing criminal prosecution. It also built in a mechanism for fines to rise automatically every three years, unless the specific law being amended already had its own separate revision method.

Building on this foundation, the government introduced the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025, in the Lok Sabha on 18 August 2025, proposing changes to 355 provisions across 16 Central Acts. It was referred to a Select Committee chaired by Tejasvi Surya, which held 49 sittings and submitted its report on 13 March 2026, recommending that decriminalisation be extended to 62 further Acts. Given how much the scope had grown, the 2025 Bill was withdrawn on 17 March 2026 and replaced ten days later by the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026.

Table 1: The Three Stages of the Jan Vishwas Reform

Source: Press Information Bureau, Government of India; PRS Legislative Research.

Functioning

The reform’s underlying logic is fairly simple: not every violation of the law deserves the label of a crime, and criminal law should ideally be reserved for conduct that is wilful, fraudulent, or genuinely harmful. Guided by this principle, the 2023 Act reclassified a large number of offences as civil violations, moving cases away from criminal courts and toward designated authorities empowered to impose monetary penalties instead.

The 2026 Act carried this logic forward at a much larger scale. It was introduced by Jitin Prasada, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, following Cabinet approval, and passed by the Lok Sabha on 1 April 2026 and the Rajya Sabha the next day. Its framework rests on four pillars: replacing imprisonment with monetary penalties for minor offences, issuing a warning before punishment for first-time lapses, calibrating penalty size to the severity of the offence, and routing disputes through Adjudicating Officers and Appellate Authorities rather than criminal courts.

Its effects are visible in everyday terms. Under the Railways Act, travelling without a ticket now attracts a civil penalty of up to Rs. 500 instead of a criminal fine, and refusing to vacate a reserved berth carries a civil penalty of up to Rs. 1,000. On the business side, the Legal Metrology Act now allows an improvement notice on a first record-keeping lapse before any penalty is imposed, and the Private Security Agencies Act has dropped the criminal fine attached to not displaying a licence. The 2026 Act also amends the 2023 Act itself, clarifying that where a specific law already has its own fine-revision method, that method applies instead of the general rule.

Table 2: How the Reform Mechanism Works

Source: Press Information Bureau, Government of India.

Performance

As the first exercise of its kind, the 2023 Act functioned largely as a proof of concept. Covering 183 provisions across 42 Acts, it was a cautious first step, but it demonstrated that decriminalisation could work without compromising enforcement.

The 2026 Act represents a dramatic scaling up. The government’s own figures place roughly 7,305 criminal offences across 370 Central laws, with about 5,333 carrying imprisonment (PIB). Against this baseline, the 2026 Act decriminalises 717 provisions and rationalises 67 more, across 79 Acts and 23 ministries, more than four times the scope of 2023 (PRS).

The process also moved fast once the Select Committee’s report was in: the Bill was introduced on 27 March 2026, passed by the Lok Sabha on 1 April, by the Rajya Sabha on 2 April, and notified as an Act on 7-8 April, completing the whole process in under two weeks. As it was only recently notified, the Act’s actual impact cannot yet be fully measured.

Table 3: Scale of the Combined Reform

Source: PRS Legislative Research; Press Information Bureau, Government of India.

Emerging Issues

Even after the 2026 Act, coverage remains partial. India’s own figures put total criminal offences at around 7,305, and the current reform, however large, does not touch all of them. Key concerns going forward include:

• Implementation delays: Since the 2026 Act spans 79 Acts across 23 ministries, each must issue its own notification and appoint Adjudicating Officers, and delays at even a few ministries could weaken the reform’s effectiveness.
• Capacity and training gaps: Adjudicating Officers will need proper training to ensure the new rules are applied consistently across cases and ministries.
• Inconsistent fine-revision rules: Different Acts retain their own fine-revision mechanisms rather than the general 2023 escalation clause, so citizens and practitioners must check which rule applies where.
• Deterrence concerns: Critics worry that removing imprisonment could weaken the disincentive against repeat violations, though the intent is to target only minor, procedural defaults.
• Awareness lag: With reforms now spread across three legislative stages, public awareness risks lagging behind the legal changes themselves.

Way Forward and Suggestions

Closing the gap between what has been legislated and what is actually enforced on the ground should be the immediate priority. Each of the 23 ministries involved should be given a clear, publicly tracked timeline to issue its commencement notification and appoint the required Adjudicating Officers, since delays at even a few ministries could leave large parts of the reform only partially effective for a considerable period. A public dashboard reporting this ministry-wise progress, along with case disposal data once the new civil-penalty framework is operational, would let Parliament and citizens verify that decriminalisation is translating into real outcomes rather than remaining a change on paper.

Given that the 2026 Act, despite its scale, still leaves a large share of India’s roughly 7,305 criminal offences untouched, a similar review of the remaining Central laws should follow, and this exercise should eventually be extended to comparable state-level legislation, where similar over-criminalisation of minor offences is common but falls outside the Centre’s direct reach. On the contested question of deterrence, a formal review after two to three years of the 2026 Act’s implementation, examining actual compliance rates and repeat-offence patterns, would help settle the debate with evidence rather than assumption, and would also indicate whether the automatic fine-revision clause carried over from 2023 is keeping penalties meaningful without becoming disproportionate.

Since the reform is now spread across three legislative stages and touches everything from railway travel to business record-keeping, a single, plainly written public resource mapping each amended Act to its specific change and revised penalty would go a long way in helping ordinary citizens and small businesses actually use the reform, rather than leaving this knowledge confined to legal practitioners and policy analysts. Distributing this information through accessible channels such as common service centres, post offices, and state government portals would further ensure that the reform’s benefits reach the people it was originally designed to protect.

References

1. Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. (2023). The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023. Press Information Bureau. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1957315
2. PRS Legislative Research. (2026). The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026. https://prsindia.org/billtrack/the-jan-vishwas-amendment-of-provisions-bill-2026
3. Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India. (2026). Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 introduced in Lok Sabha by Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Shri Jitin Prasada. Press Information Bureau. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2246226&reg=3&lang=1
4. Press Information Bureau, Government of India. (2026). Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2248925&reg=3&lang=1
5. Press Information Bureau, Government of India. (2026). Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 — Detailed Note. https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2026/apr/doc202644839301.pdf

About the Contributor

Paridhi Passi is a Research and Editorial Intern at IMPRI and a Political Science (Hons.) student at Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi. Her academic interests lie in public policy and governance.

Acknowledgement

The author extends sincere gratitude to the IMPRI team for their invaluable guidance throughout the process.

Reviewed by:

Ayan Bordoloi & Rakshit Pathak

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization.

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