Our earlier article on Modi’s administrative and governance reforms legacy touched briefly on the Jan Vishwas Act as one thread within a broader reform philosophy. This article goes considerably deeper into the specific legal mechanics: exactly which provisions changed, across how many laws, and across the multiple rounds of amendment this reform has now gone through.
The Original 2023 Act
The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, passed in 2023, decriminalised 183 specific legal provisions spread across 42 different Acts administered by 19 different central government ministries and departments, according to Moneylife’s detailed breakdown of the bill’s scope, replacing what had previously been criminal penalties, sometimes including potential imprisonment, for often minor, technical regulatory violations with civil financial penalties instead. Utkarsh’s coverage of the bill’s passage specifically confirmed this 42-law scope when the Lok Sabha passed the legislation.
What Kind of Offences Were Actually Decriminalised
The specific provisions decriminalised under the original Act generally involved minor, technical compliance failures rather than offences involving fraud, safety violations, or genuine harm to third parties, according to Ahlawat & Associates’ legal analysis of the Act, examples including certain paperwork or filing delays, minor labelling discrepancies, and similar administrative lapses that had previously carried disproportionate criminal liability relative to the actual severity of the violation, a mismatch the government specifically cited as its rationale for the reform.
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The 2025 Expansion
The reform did not stop with the original 2023 Act. A further Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, tracked by PRS Legislative Research, extended the decriminalisation push in 2025, with IndiaPolicyHub’s analysis specifically detailing this round as decriminalising 288 offences across 16 central Acts, a considerably larger single expansion than the original 2023 round in terms of the number of individual offences addressed, even though it covered fewer distinct parent Acts.
The 2026 Act’s Even Larger Scope
A further Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act followed in 2026, according to TaxGuru’s detailed breakdown, this round covering 79 laws and 784 provisions, by far the largest single expansion of the decriminalisation programme to date, spanning a considerably broader range of central legislation than either of the two earlier rounds combined, according to the same analysis.
The “Trust-Based Governance” Framing
Across all three rounds, the government has consistently framed this reform programme using the language of “trust-based governance,” a philosophy articulated in detail by the Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation’s analysis, describing the underlying idea as extending a presumption of good faith to citizens and businesses for minor, non-malicious regulatory lapses, reserving criminal prosecution specifically for offences involving genuine fraud, safety risk, or deliberate wrongdoing rather than routine administrative non-compliance.
The Business Community’s Response
The organised business and legal community has generally welcomed the reform, with Lexology’s coverage of what it termed “Jan Vishwas 2.0” describing the ongoing expansion as being on a genuine “fast track,” reflecting sustained business demand for reduced criminal liability exposure over routine compliance matters that had long been identified as a specific friction point discouraging both domestic business formation and foreign investment in India.
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What Remains a Criminal Offence
It’s worth being clear about the boundaries of this reform: the Jan Vishwas Act framework specifically targets minor, technical, non-malicious violations for decriminalisation, and does not extend to offences involving genuine fraud, deliberate safety violations, environmental harm, or other conduct causing actual third-party harm, which remain subject to criminal liability under their respective governing laws, a distinction the government has consistently emphasised across all three rounds of this reform to counter any suggestion that the programme represents a broader weakening of regulatory enforcement rather than a targeted recalibration of penalty severity for specifically minor infractions.
A Concrete Example: The Pharmaceutical Sector
To make the abstract idea of “decriminalisation” more concrete, it’s worth looking at one specific sectoral example. The 2026 round of the Jan Vishwas Act specifically targeted pharmaceutical-sector offences, according to Medical Dialogues’ coverage of the amendment, replacing criminal prosecution for certain minor drug-law compliance violations, the kind involving paperwork or labelling errors rather than substandard or counterfeit medicine, with monetary civil penalties instead, a sector-specific application of the same broader “trust-based governance” principle described above, applied here to an industry where the government has been careful to maintain that offences actually endangering patient safety remain fully criminal.
Bottom Line
The Jan Vishwas Act has progressively decriminalised minor regulatory offences across three expanding rounds, from 183 provisions across 42 laws in 2023, to 288 offences across 16 laws in 2025, to 79 laws and 784 provisions in 2026, a sustained “trust-based governance” reform programme that replaces criminal liability with civil penalties specifically for minor, non-malicious compliance failures while leaving offences involving genuine fraud or harm fully subject to criminal law.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available legislative records and news reports listed below. It is written for general informational purposes and does not represent an official statement from the Government of India.
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