Why Jan Vishwas Act marks a major reform for the criminal justice system, Pg16

Key Highlights:

• The Jan Vishwas (Amendment to Provisions) Act, 2023 was passed by Parliament in April to amend 183 provisions across 42 laws.
• The Act aims to improve ease of doing business and extensively decriminalizes and rationalizes punishments across various laws.
• The amendments decriminalize or rationalize 1,018 individual actions and omissions treated as offences under the law.
• The Act proposes four broad types of changes: decriminalization, omission, compounding, and rationalization.

Detailed Insights:

• The Act amends laws across sectors like business and industry, transportation and infrastructure, and municipal governance, along with Colonial-era legislation.
• Decriminalization involves replacing criminal sanctions with civil mechanisms like warnings and monetary penalties, removing 805 offences from the criminal justice system.
• Omission includes removing redundant or outdated offences (125 offences) and offences covered under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS).
• Compounding allows violators to settle cases by paying a prescribed sum (35 offences), while rationalization reduces imprisonment terms and revises fines (53 offences).
• The Act distinguishes between fines, which are court-imposed, and penalties, which are civil in nature and imposed by adjudicatory officers for quicker enforcement.
• The reforms address outdated offences, general contraventions, procedural defaults, and obstruction of public servants, making the criminal law landscape more reasonable.
• As of December 2024, there were 370 Central laws with 7,305 criminal offences in force, with over 74% regulating areas outside core criminal justice.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Decriminalization: The process of removing an act or omission from being classified as a criminal offense.
• Compounding: Settling a legal case by paying a prescribed sum, avoiding prolonged litigation.
• Rationalization: The process of making something more logical or consistent, often involving simplification.