Parliament passed the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 in early April, with the Rajya Sabha clearing it by voice vote a day after the Lok Sabha approved it. The law decriminalises 717 provisions across 80 central legislations, replacing imprisonment clauses and criminal fines for minor violations with civil penalties, improvement notices, and warnings. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, presenting the Bill in the upper house, said the reform would reduce compliance burdens, improve investor confidence, and support what the government calls "Minimum Government, Maximum Governance."

This is the most significant overhaul of India's regulatory penalty framework in decades, and it arrives against a backdrop that demands scrutiny, not celebration alone.

The Scale of Overcriminalisation This Bill Addresses

India's regulatory architecture had accumulated a serious structural problem. Before this legislation:

• 7,305 criminal offences existed across 370 central laws.
• 5,333 of those offences carried imprisonment provisions.
• Over 74% of these laws were regulatory in nature, not core criminal statutes.

What that means in practice is that a small trader failing to file a return under the Tea Act, a clinic with a minor administrative deficiency, or a commuter refusing to produce a railway ticket could all face criminal prosecution. The courts carried a significant proportion of cases involving these minor procedural and technical violations, cases that had no business being in the criminal justice system in the first place.

The Legislative Path to the 2026 Bill

The reform did not arrive without a clear legislative history. The Jan Vishwas Act 2023 served as the first phase, amending 42 central laws and decriminalising 183 provisions by replacing imprisonment with fines. The government then introduced a Jan Vishwas Bill in August 2025, covering 16 central acts administered by 10 ministries. That version was referred to a Select Committee chaired by Tejasvi Surya, which held 49 sittings and submitted its report on March 13, 2026. The committee recommended expanding the scope to 62 additional acts beyond the original 16. The 2025 Bill was withdrawn on March 17, 2026. The revised and substantially expanded 2026 Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha on March 27, passed both houses in April, and now covers 784 provisions across 79 central acts.

That committee process matters legally. It gives the legislation a consultative foundation, which strengthens its standing if challenged on grounds of arbitrariness or disproportionality.

What the Jan Vishwas Bill 2026 Actually Changes

The Bill operates on four stated principles: warning before punishment, proportionate penalties, faster resolution through dedicated adjudicating officers, and an automatic revision of fines every three years at 10% of the minimum penalty.

Sector-Specific Changes That Affect Citizens Directly

Several of the reforms address offences that had no rational justification for carrying criminal liability:

• Under the Railways Act 1989, refusing to vacate a reserved berth carried a criminal fine. The reform converts this to a civil penalty of up to Rs 1,000, resolved administratively.
• Travelling without a ticket or refusing to produce one, previously a criminal matter with fines up to Rs 500, is now a civil violation with the same penalty ceiling but without criminal proceedings.
• Unlicensed hawking on railway premises, which previously attracted up to one year of imprisonment, now carries a civil penalty of Rs 2,000.
• Noise pollution and honking offences now attract a recorded warning for the first violation, and a civil penalty of Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 for repeat offences, replacing earlier criminal provisions.
• Driving without insurance, previously punishable with up to three months imprisonment, now attracts a civil fine of Rs 5,000 for the first offence and Rs 10,000 for subsequent violations.
• Under the NDMC Act 1994, public nuisances such as improper waste disposal, previously a criminal matter with a nominal Rs 50 fine, are now subject to a civil penalty of Rs 500.

Changes That Affect Business Compliance

For businesses, the more consequential reforms are in sector-specific acts where criminal prosecution for technical failures had created genuine uncertainty:

• Under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940, manufacturing cosmetics in contravention of the Act was punishable with imprisonment up to one year and a fine of up to Rs 20,000. The Bill replaces this with a civil penalty of Rs 1 lakh or three times the value of confiscated goods, whichever is higher.
• Under the National Highways Act 1956, making a highway impassable or less safe carried imprisonment up to five years. The Bill replaces that with a civil penalty between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore.
• Mining enterprises previously faced imprisonment of up to two years or a fine for procedural violations under mineral-related legislation. The reform replaces imprisonment with a monetary penalty of up to Rs 50 lakh.
• Under the Legal Metrology Act 2009, offences involving non-standard weights or measures now follow a graduated sequence: an improvement notice on the first offence, a civil penalty on the second, and a criminal fine only for subsequent repeat violations.
• The Electricity Act 2003 and Indian Succession Act 1925 both lose their imprisonment provisions for non-compliance orders and procedural failures respectively, replaced with enhanced monetary fines.

The Adjudication Framework

Beyond changing penalty types, the Bill introduces adjudicating officers who will conduct inquiries and impose civil penalties, along with appellate authorities to hear challenges against those decisions. This matters because it creates an administrative justice pathway separate from the criminal courts. Compounding provisions are also expanded, allowing offences to be settled by paying a prescribed amount without proceeding to trial.

Where the Reform Falls Short: A Legal Analysis

Parliament has passed the law. That is one thing. Whether it produces the promised shift in India's regulatory culture is another question entirely.

The Enforcement Culture Problem

Virag Gupta, an advocate practicing before the Supreme Court, has noted that overcriminalisation is not only a legislative problem. It is also an administrative practice. FIRs for digital expression, expansive use of public order provisions, and routine invocation of criminal law for disputes that belong in civil adjudication continue independent of what the statute books say. The Jan Vishwas Bill does not address that behavioral dimension of enforcement, and statutory reform alone cannot do so.

The reform also leaves unresolved the civic infrastructure gap. A graduated penalty framework assumes the state has the administrative capacity to issue notices, collect civil fines, and run appellate mechanisms efficiently. In many districts, that capacity does not exist in the form the legislation requires.

What the Bill Does Not Cover

The 2026 Bill does not touch criminal provisions in core penal statutes, special legislation such as the NDPS Act or PMLA, or the broad criminal provisions that have been the subject of recent Supreme Court scrutiny in cases involving press freedom and sedition. The decriminalisation here is confined to regulatory and procedural violations in specific central acts, which is the right scope but not a complete picture of India's overcriminalisation problem.