The ministry of commerce and industry introduced the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025 amidst protests by the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. This bill is its second edition — Jan Vishwas 2.0: the first was introduced in 2022 and passed in 2023. Jan Vishwas 2.0 seeks to amend 16 laws decriminalising minor offences and substituting penalty amounts in other legislations.
The substantive content of the bill is not the issue of concern as much as the procedural aspects adopted by the ministry. The bill was referred to the Select Committee of the Lok Sabha, implying only Lok Sabha MPs will be part of this committee. This is in stark contrast to the earlier practice of the same ministry with the same bill: Jan Vishwas 1.0 was referred to a Joint Committee comprising 21 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha. The Joint Committee was constituted in December 2022 and laid the report in the Rajya Sabha on March 17, 2023 and on March 20, 2023 in the Lok Sabha. The Joint Committee was thus able to complete its task in only 10 sittings within four months of its constitution.
The current Select Committee excludes Rajya Sabha representatives. By doing so, the government has disregarded the principle of federalism. The Rajya Sabha is constitutionally designed to protect state interests and provide regional balance. Excluding its voice from legislative deliberation erodes the checks and balances essential to our bicameral model.
This is not merely a one-off procedural quirk. In the 14th and the 15th Lok Sabhas, about 60-71% of bills were referred to committees. That proportion has plummeted in recent years: 27% in the 16th Lok Sabha and a mere 16% in the 17th. At the start of the 18th Lok Sabha, of the 36 bills introduced in the lower House and 5 in the upper House, not a single one was sent to a Standing Committee. Most committees now focus narrowly on Demand for Grants and Action Taken Reports, with only a few, such as those overseeing finance, rural development and panchayati raj, and commerce, venturing into substantive policy subject matters.
The failure to refer the Jan Vishwas 2.0 Bill to the Department-related Standing Committee on Commerce and Industry compounds the procedural violation. The DRC’s Chair is currently an Opposition MP from the Rajya Sabha. This appears to be politically motivated.
It is important to recall how the system evolved. Before 1992, bills were often referred to Select or Joint Committees for scrutiny. With the creation of the DRCs the same year, and their expansion in 2004, Parliament consciously institutionalised subject-matter review across ministries. Since then, the norm has been that bills are referred to the relevant DRC unless there is extraordinary urgency requiring the constitution of an ad hoc committee. This norm has been abandoned without any justification.
The institutional role of the DRCs is not ornamental. These committees were designed to fortify legislative oversight by subject experts within Parliament itself. Their composition ensures political and regional balance. To ignore this mechanism in favour of an exclusive Lok Sabha Select Committee is to disregard the very logic on which the 1992 reforms were based.
More recently, the government has leaned heavily on ad hoc committees in place of Standing Committees, whether through the Joint Committee on the Waqf Bills, the Joint Committee on the Biological Diversity Amendment Bill, or the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill. This shift is not just procedural convenience; it signals a deliberate attempt to recast scrutiny mechanisms in ways that suit the executive.
A healthy parliamentary system is built on cooperation across Houses and respect for procedural integrity. Parliament must reaffirm the primacy of departmental committees and resist ad hoc strategies that diminish the Rajya Sabha’s role.
Shashank Pandey is a lawyer