Industry must give inputs on Jan Vishwas Bill for continued decriminalisation of minor offences: Goyal

The industry must give its inputs to the government for the next edition of the Jan Vishwas Bill to continue the process of decriminalisation of laws and reduction of compliance burden, Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has said.

Addressing the industry on Friday, the Minister also expressed confidence about India’s foreign exchange reserve sustaining the economy for the next five-six years even at the current levels of current account deficit and trade deficit, considering other inflows such as remittances and foreign investments.

Jan Vishwas

“The idea behind Jan Vishwas was to cut across Departments and Ministries and find areas where there are minor misdemeanours and no malafide intentions, to eliminate criminal provision.We could have a small punishment like a fine or something. But we must ease the mind from day to day fear of criminal action,” Goyal said in his speech at  industry body FICCI’s Annual General Meeting.

This needs to be a continuous process, the Minister added. “We want to come up with Jan Vishwas 2, Jan Vishwas 3 and Jan Vishwas 4…and continuously evaluate all the processes, laws of the land and procedures to try and decriminalise and reduce compliance burden,” he said.

Goyal emphasised that the idea behind the exercise was also to ensure that there is no rent seeking. “The industry must come up with more ideas so that we don’t leave any avenue for people to put the gun on your head. We want to decriminalise all such laws. If there is adulteration in food or there are spurious medicines, that has to be taken seriously. But for small misdemeanours, wherever possible we want to decriminalise,” he added.

Decriminalising minor offences

The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2023, seeks to decriminalise a total of 183 provisions in 42 Central Acts administered by 19 Ministries/Departments. Decriminalisation is proposed to be achieved in various manner such as removing imprisonment and fines and introducing compounding of offences.

Lauding the resilience of the Indian economy and industry, Goyal said that the country was looking at a journey of exponential growth to become the the largest economy worldwide in the next four years.

He said that India’s foreign reserves continued to be sticky despite global challenges such as the Ukraine crisis. “If we look at our our foreign exchange reserves, they are enough to provide for the next five or six years without any threat to our economy or our foreign currency valuation…even if we have our current level of current account and trade deficit, considering the other inflows we get in terms of remittances and foreign investments,” the Minister said.

On the tricky issue of the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, Goyal assured that India would retaliate but also try to see how to convert the situation to its advantage.

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