NEW DELHI: The Jan Vishwas (Amendment) Bill 2025, aimed at decriminalising certain minor offences to enhance ease of living and promote business, will be introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal.
According to the Lok Sabha’s list of business, the bill—officially titled the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025—seeks “to amend certain enactments for decriminalising and rationalising offences to further strengthen trust-based governance for ease of living and doing business.”
The proposed legislation intends to amend over 350 provisions. An official said the move is expected to foster a more citizen-friendly and business-conducive environment across the country.
This initiative forms part of the government’s ongoing efforts to improve the nation’s business climate. In 2023, the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act had decriminalised 183 provisions across 42 central Acts overseen by 19 ministries and departments. Under that Act, certain offences were either stripped of imprisonment, fines, or both, with some converted into monetary penalties.
In his Independence Day address on August 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted the need for such reforms: “There are laws in our country, astonishing as it may sound, that provide for imprisonment over trivial matters, and no one ever paid attention to them.”
He added, “I have taken it upon myself to ensure that such unnecessary laws, which place Indian citizens behind bars, are abolished. We had introduced a bill in Parliament earlier; we have brought it again this time.”
The government has previously eliminated more than 40,000 unnecessary compliances and scrapped over 1,500 outdated laws. “We have gone to Parliament to amend dozens of laws to simplify them, always placing the interests of the public first,” Modi said.
