The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA), 2023 replaces the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, as part of the broader overhaul of India's criminal statutes alongside the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. Most of the underlying scheme of the Evidence Act — relevancy of facts, burden of proof, presumptions, and the treatment of documentary and oral evidence — carries over largely intact, so the change is less a rewrite than a renumbering and modernisation exercise.
The most practically significant change is the explicit recognition of electronic and digital records as primary evidence. The BSA folds electronic records into the definition of documents rather than treating them as a special secondary-evidence category, which changes how certificates under the equivalent of Section 65B are approached in practice, since electronic evidence no longer needs to be routed through the same secondary-evidence lens as before.
Practitioners should treat this as a codification and renumbering exercise rather than a change in first principles: cross-referencing tables mapping old Evidence Act sections to their BSA equivalents are essential during the transition, particularly for pending matters governed by the old Act's procedural provisions.
The Act applies prospectively from the date it was brought into force, and courts have generally continued to apply the Evidence Act to matters already governed by it, with the BSA applying to proceedings arising after commencement. Litigators should check the applicable transitional provision in any matter that straddles the changeover.