Parliament has passed the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026, amending 82 central laws to decriminalise or rationalise a wide range of offences — continuing a decriminalisation drive that began with the original Jan Vishwas Act of 2023.
The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 27, 2026 by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, passed by the Lok Sabha on April 1, 2026, and passed by the Rajya Sabha the following day. It replaces an earlier 2025 version confined to 17 Acts; a Select Committee subsequently widened its scope to the 82 Acts it now covers.
The changes fall into several categories. Some offences are converted from criminal to purely civil penalties: under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, for instance, manufacturing or selling non-compliant cosmetics — previously punishable with up to a year's imprisonment and a ₹20,000 fine — will now draw a civil penalty of ₹1 lakh or three times the value of the confiscated goods, whichever is higher. Elsewhere, imprisonment is simply dropped while fines are retained or increased: the Indian Succession Act and the Electricity Act both lose imprisonment terms of up to three months in favour of monetary penalties alone. A smaller set of offences — including false fire alarms under the Delhi Police Act and the failure to report births or deaths under municipal law — are removed from the statute book as offences altogether.
The Bill also builds in automatic escalation, revising monetary penalties upward by 10% every three years, and introduces a graduated enforcement approach for some violations — an advisory for a first contravention, a warning for a second, and only then a civil penalty. To administer the new civil-penalty regime, the Bill creates adjudicating officers and appellate authorities in place of criminal prosecution. Separately, it amends the New Delhi Municipal Council Act to restructure property taxation and abolish the advertisement tax.
For lawyers advising businesses and individuals on regulatory risk, the practical effect is a substantial shift of exposure away from criminal courts and prosecutions toward a civil, adjudicatory process — though, as the analysis alongside this report explains, that is a change in forum and consequence, not a withdrawal of regulation.