Adjudication of Penalties After the Jan Vishwas Act

In one line

Since 1 August 2024 some contraventions of this Act are no longer crimes but civil penalties, imposed by an adjudicating officer of the Registry with an appeal to an officer one rank above, and imprisonment appears only if the order is not obeyed.

What the Jan Vishwas Act was

Its full name is the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023, Act 18 of 2023. Its purpose was decriminalisation: to remove imprisonment from a long list of minor regulatory offences across forty-two central statutes, and to replace them with civil penalties adjudicated administratively.

It works by a Schedule. Section 2 of that Act gives effect to a Schedule which amends each statute in turn. This Act appears in that Schedule.

Three changes were made here, all with effect from 1 August 2024.

1. Sections 37A and 37B were inserted, creating an adjudication and appeal mechanism.
2. Section 42(2) was substituted, turning the false-representation offence into a civil penalty. Chapter 540 works it.
3. Sections 43 and 44 were omitted outright.

What was removed

Section 43 was headed "Penalty for improperly describing a place of business as connected with the Geographical Indications Registry". Section 44 was headed "Penalty for falsification of entries in the register". Both carried imprisonment.

Both are gone. They were regulatory offences that nobody had been prosecuted for, and the Jan Vishwas policy was that such offences should not sit on the statute book carrying a prison term.

But section 50(1) still names them. It provides that no court shall take cognizance of an offence "under section 42 or section 43 or section 44" except on a written complaint by the Registrar. Two of those three sections no longer exist and the third is no longer an offence. That is a drafting survivor of the amendment, and a careful answer points it out rather than reciting section 50(1) as though it still worked.

Section 37A: adjudication of penalties

The provision. "The Registrar may, by an order, authorise an officer referred to in section 3, to be adjudicating officer for holding an inquiry and imposing penalty under the provisions of this Act, in the manner as may be prescribed, after giving a reasonable opportunity of being heard."

Four elements.

Who. An officer referred to in section 3, that is an officer appointed by the Central Government to discharge the Registrar's functions under his superintendence.

How appointed. By an order of the Registrar.

What he does. Holds an inquiry and imposes a penalty, in the prescribed manner.

The safeguard. A reasonable opportunity of being heard, written into the section.

Which penalties does he impose? Those the Act now provides as penalties rather than as punishments. The clearest is section 42(2) as substituted, the false-representation penalty of half a per cent of turnover or five lakh rupees, whichever is less.