New Delhi | The members of the ruling party and opposition traded barbs in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday over the second edition of the Jan Vishwas bill, with the BJP pitching it as the largest decriminalising exercise in India's history for the ease of doing business and the Congress alleging that the proposed legislation will promote corruption and weaken the rule of law.
Moving the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026, for consideration and passage in the Lok Sabha, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said the bill seeks to enhance the ease of doing business and ease of living by decriminalising minor offences.
"It proposes to amend 79 central Acts, administered by 23 ministries," he said.
Initiating the debate on the bill, Congress's Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy said he is speaking on the "hypocrisy" of the proposed legislation as it talks of decriminalising multiple laws but in reality, is actually "normalising corruption, fraud and corporate non-compliance".
"This bill does not build public trust but betrays it. It is bluntly asking us to trade justice for revenue and accountability with administrative convenience," Reddy said.
"The biggest concern I would like to flag is the biggest threat to women's safety that this bill presents, especially at a time when every woman in the country deserves stronger protection," the MP from Telangana's Bhongir said.
"Under the Railways Act, section 145, dealing with drunken and disorderly behaviour on trains currently carries only 24 hours of imprisonment, which is laughably inadequate," he said.
"This is not reform, this is administrative surrender and I oppose it completely," Reddy asserted.
This reform is asking for support for the systematic dismantling of the fear of law, he said.
Speaking in support of the bill, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Tejasvi Surya said it will decriminalise some of the procedural and minor offences, which will in turn facilitate ease of doing business and entrepreneurship in the country.
Thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said this is the largest decriminalising exercise in India's history.
"In one legislation, the government is decriminalising 1,000-plus offences. Perhaps, this is the model for the rest of the world to follow," Surya said.
Slamming the Congress, he said earlier, "70 years of colonial mindset" of the opposition party targeted all sections of the society with criminal prosecution.
"Today, all these minor offences are being decriminalised and an era of trust-based empowerment is being brought in," the Bangalore South MP said.
Surya cited the example of Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy, saying he had to make a trip to Delhi 40-50 times just to import a computer.
"This was how enterprise was shackled," Surya said, alleging that entrepreneurial spirit was curtailed during the Congress rule.
He went on to narrate an anecdote about industrialist J R D Tata and India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
"When J R D Tata met Pandit Nehru, he communicated to the prime minister that Indian entrepreneurs were not making profit. The prime minister then told him -- 'do not bring the word profit before me, profit is a dirty word'. If our wealth creators are not respected, if industrialists are being subjected to this kind of prosecution and imprisonment threat, how will the country move forward?" the BJP MP asked.
"There has been no change in the Congress's mindset from calling profit a dirty word during Nehruji's time to Rahul Gandhi today attacking the industrialists and wealth creators of this country," Surya said.
He hailed Modi for the forward-looking reform.
"Franklin Roosevelt is still remembered gratefully by Americans for the structural reforms he created in the country, Ronald Reagan is respected with gratitude for the new institutions in America that have stood their ground over the years, Margaret Thatcher is respected in Britain because she navigated the country in the most difficult of economic times. Deng Xiaoping is remembered by the Chinese because he opened up their economy and modernised it. Lee Kuan Ye is remembered gratefully by Singaporeans because he modernised an old port town.
"Narendra Modi will be remembered in the coming days as somebody who did for India what Roosevelt, Reagan, Lee and Thatcher together did for their respective countries. This is the foundation of a Viksit Bharat," Surya said.
Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Harendra Singh Malik raised concerns over the bill and said it would weaken the accountability of crime.
"While the government is stating that the bill is changing the colonial laws of punishment, it is actually replacing jail time for offences with small fines," he claimed.
The BJP-led government introduced the second edition of the Jan Vishwas bill last week. A total of 784 provisions are being proposed to be amended under the bill, of which 717 are getting decriminalised to foster ease of doing business and 67 are proposed to be changed to facilitate ease of living.
Goyal, on March 18 last year, introduced the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025, in the Lok Sabha and it was referred to the select committee.
This exercise builds on the success of the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023, the first consolidated legislation to systematically decriminalise minor offences across multiple Acts.
The 2023 Act, notified on August 11, 2023, decriminalised 183 provisions in 42 central Acts administered by 19 ministries and departments.
