Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2022 [UPSC Notes]

The union government introduced a bill called the ‘Jan Vishwas Bill’, with the intention to decriminalise minor offences. This is an important development related to polity and governance, which is an integral part of the GS2 paper of the UPSC syllabus.

Jan Vishwas Bill Provisions

The chief provisions of the Jan Vishwas Bill are discussed below.

• With this law, the government intends to decriminalise around 182 provisions of 42 laws across 19 ministries.
  • For example, under the Agricultural Produce (Grading and Marking) Act, 1937, counterfeiting grade designation marks is punishable with imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of up to five thousand rupees. The Bill replaces this with a penalty of eight lakh rupees.
• The bill also proposed that the fines and penalties provided under various provisions should be increased by 10 per cent of the minimum amount of fine or penalty after the expiry of every three years after the bill turns into a law.
• The Bill also specifies the appellate mechanisms for any person aggrieved by the order passed by an adjudicating officer.  For instance, in the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, appeals may be filed with the National Green Tribunal within 60 days of the order.
• The idea behind the bill is to enhance the ‘ease of living’ and the ‘ease of doing business’ in India.
• Some Acts that are amended by the Bill include the Indian Post Office Act, 1898, the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991, and the Information Technology Act, 2000.
• The bill either removes penal provisions or introduces fines in their place in various existing laws, in a few other Acts, offences would be decriminalised by imposing a penalty instead of a fine.

The bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2022. It has been referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee and its report is expected during the Union Budget session of Parliament in 2023.

Need for Jan Vishwas Bill

The major reasons why this bill has been introduced in the Parliament are:

• The fear of imprisonment was the major reason for sluggish growth in the ‘ease of doing business’ environment.
• Criminalisation for minor offences gives enormous power in the hands of the authority to misuse these laws for personal benefit.
• Such laws also result in overcrowding of the prison and thus lead to the violation of human rights.
• Many complicated laws have increased the burden on the courts and thereby contributed to the pendency of the cases.

Jan Vishwas Bill Advantages

Some of the benefits and advantages offered by this bill are:

• It will inspire greater confidence among the people and enhance their trust.
• Overcrowding of jails can be avoided and violations of human rights can be prevented.
• The proposed law will also help reduce the burden on the judiciary.
• Additionally, it will help in reducing litigation against the government.

Key concerns associated with the Bill

• The analysis of the provisions of the Bill indicates that there has been an increased focus on the replacement of imprisonment clauses with fines and experts believe that this alone cannot be termed as “decriminalisation” instead they term it as “quasi-decriminalisation”.
• According to Andrew Ashworth’s seminal piece titled “Is the Criminal Law a Lost Cause?”, the objective of a “tax” is mainly regulatory in nature whereas a “fine” carries an element of censure and stigma with it.
  • This functional difference is being increasingly diluted under the legislative frameworks which use these elements of censure and stigma in regulatory domains.
• According to the report of the Observer Research Foundation titled “Jailed for Doing Business”, there were over 26,134 imprisonment provisions in about 843 economic laws, rules and regulations which regulated economic activities in India.
  • Considering the above numbers, the number of offences deregulated by the new Bill seems to be very few.

Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill 2022:- Download PDF Here