DECRIMINALISATION AT THE CROSSROADS: The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 and Its Transformative Impact on Motor Vehicle Law Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan Co-Author, Principles of Insurance Law (12th Ed., LexisNexis) The New Parliament Building (Sansad Bhavan), New Delhi — Inaugurated 28 May 2023 Preamble The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 (Bill No. 104 of

DECRIMINALISATION AT THE CROSSROADS:

The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 and Its Transformative Impact on Motor Vehicle Law

Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

Co-Author, Principles of Insurance Law (12th Ed., LexisNexis)

The New Parliament Building (Sansad Bhavan), New Delhi — Inaugurated 28 May 2023

Preamble

The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 (Bill No. 104 of 2026), introduced in the Lok Sabha on 25 March 2026, constitutes the third act in a trilogy of legislative instruments dedicated to the decriminalisation and rationalisation of Central statutes. Of the 79 enactments targeted, the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 emerges as the most consequentially reformed. This article undertakes a provision-by-provision examination of the Bill’s amendments — from the restoration of a grace period for driving licences to a hard cap on limitation for motor accident claims — and evaluates their implications for practitioners, insurers, and claimants. The analysis reveals a legislative architecture that is simultaneously compassionate, corrective, and commercially attuned.

I.  LEGISLATIVE CONTEXT AND PHILOSOPHY

The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026, introduced in the Lok Sabha on 25 March 2026, is the third in a series of statutory instruments conceived under the rubric of “decriminalisation.” Its animating philosophy — first articulated in the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023 — is to excise the punitive fangs of imprisonment and criminal prosecution from provisions that regulate commercial, technical, and civic behaviour rather than criminality in any morally meaningful sense.

In the domain of road transport, the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 has long carried within it a contradictory impulse: a welfare statute drafted with a compensatory heart but enforced, in many provisions, with a penal fist. The 2026 Bill seeks to resolve this contradiction in twenty provisions. The changes it introduces are not cosmetic. For the MACT practitioner, the insurance adjuster, and the litigation counsel, the Bill demands a thoroughgoing recalibration of strategy, advisory positions, and compliance frameworks.

Three overarching objectives organise the Bill’s reform of motor vehicle law: (i) ease of living for vehicle owners and licence holders; (ii) protection of accident victims from procedural and financial forfeitures; and (iii) systemic accountability of road safety authorities who have hitherto enjoyed insulation from meaningful liability.

II.  COMPARATIVE TABLE OF AMENDMENTS: MOTOR VEHICLES ACT, 1988

The following table maps the existing provisions against the proposed changes introduced by the 2026 Bill, with a characterisation of the nature of each amendment:

Sec. 14 — Driving Licence Expiry

Licence expires on the date specified; immediate invalidation on expiry.

30-day grace period inserted: every driving licence continues effective for 30 days from the date of expiry.

Ease of Living — DL Holders

Sec. 15 — Renewal of DL

Renewal back-dated to date of expiry only in limited situations.

DL renewed with effect from date of expiry where application made within one year prior to expiry.

Ease of Living — DL Holders

Sec. 55 — Transfer of Registration

Owner must report cancellation/transfer of registration within 14 days.

Time extended from 14 days to 30 days.

Ease of Doing Business

Sec. 75 — Motor Cab / Motor Cycle Stand Scheme

Scheme empowers State Government to regulate motor cab stands only.

Scheme extended to include motor cycles (two-wheelers) in addition to motor cabs.

Regulatory Rationalisation

Sec. 157 — Transfer of Certificate of Insurance

Transferee must apply within 14 days of transfer of vehicle.

Period extended to 30 days.

Ease of Living

Sec. 161(4)(b) — Hit-and-Run False Claim

False claim for hit-and-run compensation: punishable with imprisonment up to 2 years OR fine ₹25,000–₹5 lakh or both.

Decriminalised: imprisonment removed; civil penalty ₹1 lakh–₹5 lakh only.

Decriminalisation

Sec. 163 — Ex Gratia: Hit-and-Run

No express protection of ex gratia payment from recovery; ambiguity as to whether ex gratia must be refunded to MVAF.

Express protection inserted: ex gratia payments for death/grievous hurt shall NOT be refunded to Motor Vehicle Accident Fund under Sec. 164B.

Pro-Claimant / MACT Reform

Sec. 164 — Structured Compensation

No protection against deduction of ex gratia from structured compensation; ‘grievous hurt’ undefined for MVA purposes.

Ex gratia payments NOT deductible from Sec. 164 compensation. Explanation added defining ‘grievous hurt’ as per Sec. 116 of BNS, 2023.

Pro-Claimant / MACT Reform

Sec. 166 — Application to Claims Tribunal

Application must be filed within 6 months; condonation of delay possible but no cap on further period.

Claims Tribunal may entertain application beyond 6 months but within a further 12 months on sufficient cause shown (total outer limit: 18 months).

MACT Procedural Reform

Sec. 168 — Award by Claims Tribunal

No time limit for disposal of MACT applications.

Endeavour to dispose within 12 months from receipt; Tribunal must record reasons in writing if unable to do so.

MACT — Expeditious Justice

Sec. 177 — General Offences

First contravention: fine (no minimum floor). Repeat: fine.

First contravention: WARNING (recorded). Second/subsequent: penalty ₹500–₹1,500.

Decriminalisation — Warning System

Sec. 177A — Road Regulation Contraventions

First contravention: fine. Repeat: fine.

First contravention: WARNING. Second/subsequent: penalty ₹500–₹1,000.

Decriminalisation — Warning System

Sec. 179 — Obstruction of Authority

Resistance to authority: imprisonment up to 1 month OR fine up to ₹2,000 or both.

Imprisonment removed; penalty ₹500–₹2,000 only.

Decriminalisation

Sec. 182 — Driving Under Disqualification

Imprisonment up to 1 month OR fine up to ₹10,000 or both.

Fixed penalty of ₹10,000 only; imprisonment removed.

Decriminalisation

Sec. 192A — Using Vehicle Without Permit

First offence: imprisonment up to 6 months OR fine ₹10,000 or both. Subsequent: imprisonment 6 months–1 year OR fine.

First: penalty ₹10,000. Subsequent: penalty ₹20,000. Imprisonment entirely removed.

Decriminalisation

Sec. 193 — Aggregators: Violations

Sub-sec (3): fine of ₹5,000.

Sub-sec (3): penalty ₹50,000–₹1 lakh (ten-fold increase in minimum).

Penalty Rationalisation — Upward Revision

Sec. 194E — Failure to Obey Traffic Signals by Emergency Vehicles

First offence: imprisonment up to 6 months OR fine ₹10,000 or both.

First offence: penalty ₹10,000 only. Second/subsequent: retains imprisonment up to 6 months or fine.

Partial Decriminalisation

Sec. 194F — Horns and Silence Zones

Existing provision penalises horn misuse without a ‘first warning’ grace.

First contravention: WARNING. Second/subsequent: penalty ₹1,000–₹2,000.

Decriminalisation — Warning First

Sec. 196 — Driving Without Insurance (Third Party)

First: imprisonment up to 3 months OR fine ₹2,000 or both. Subsequent: imprisonment up to 3 months OR fine ₹4,000 or both.

First: penalty = 3× base premium or ₹5,000 (whichever higher). Subsequent: 5× base premium or ₹10,000 (whichever higher). Imprisonment removed.

Decriminalisation + Premium-Linked Penalty

Sec. 198A — Road Safety Authority Failures

Liability capped; jurisdiction unclear between Central/State.

Penalty up to ₹50 lakh. For national highways: credited to MVAF (Sec. 164B). For other roads: to State Government.

Accountability for Road Authorities

III.  ANALYSIS AND IMPLICATIONS

The twenty amendments do not stand as isolated legislative interventions. Examined collectively, they reveal four structural themes of considerable doctrinal and practical significance.

A. MACT Reform and the 18-Month Hard Cap: The amendment to Section 166 is, for the MACT practitioner, the single most consequential change in the Bill. Under the existing regime, the six-month limitation period was softened by judicial discretion to condone delay without any outer limit — a feature that generated inconsistency across Tribunals and prolonged uncertainty for insurers. The 2026 Bill introduces a strict 18-month absolute ceiling: an initial six months, extendable by a further twelve months only on sufficient cause being shown. Beyond this outer limit, no application may be entertained. Simultaneously, Section 168 imposes a twelve-month disposal target, requiring Tribunals to record written reasons for non-compliance. Together, these provisions signal an intent to convert MACT proceedings from open-ended exercises in delay into time-bound mechanisms for just compensation.

B. Protection of Interim Relief — Sections 163 and 164: The amendments to Sections 163 and 164 address a lacuna that had, in practice, disadvantaged claimants who had received ex gratia payments from the Motor Vehicle Accident Fund (MVAF) under Section 164B. Courts were not uniform on whether such ex gratia amounts were deductible from final structured compensation or recoverable by the Fund. The Bill now expressly provides that ex gratia payments shall be neither deducted from structured compensation under Section 164 nor refunded to the MVAF. Additionally, the amendment introduces a statutory definition of ‘grievous hurt’ — tethered to Section 116 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — thereby eliminating another source of forensic dispute in quantum proceedings.

C. The Licence Grace Period — A Resurrection of Section 14: This author has previously published on the mischief caused by the deletion of the grace period from Sections 14 and 15 of the Motor Vehicles Act with effect from 1 September 2019. That deletion had enabled insurers to raise the defence of a technically expired licence even where the driver was otherwise competent and the expiry had occurred within a matter of days before the accident. The 2026 Bill restores sanity: the grace period is reinstated as thirty days. During this window, the licence is deemed ‘effective,’ foreclosing the ‘invalid licence’ defence that had been deployed — often opportunistically — in post-Swaran Singh pay-and-recover proceedings. Practitioners advising insurer clients must revise their opinion templates accordingly.

D. Warning-First Mechanism and Premium-Linked Penalties: The introduction of a ‘warning-first’ regime for violations under Sections 177, 177A, and 194F reflects a studied rejection of the approach that treated every technical default as an occasion for revenue generation through fines. More structurally innovative is the amendment to Section 196, which replaces the flat fines for uninsured driving with a penalty calibrated to three times the base premium (or ₹5,000, whichever is higher) for a first offence, and five times the base premium (or ₹10,000, whichever is higher) for subsequent offences. This premium-linkage ensures that the penalty scales with the risk actually underwritten, making it a more rational deterrent than a static fine. The mandatory triennial revision of penalties by 10% under Section 3 of the Bill further institutionalises this calibration over time.

E. Accountability of Road Safety Authorities: Section 198A, as amended, imposes penalties of up to ₹50 lakh on road safety authorities for prescribed failures — a provision that had existed largely on paper. The amendment channels these penalties into the MVAF for national highways and to the State Government for other roads, creating an institutional feedback loop between road authority negligence and accident compensation. This is a significant, if underappreciated, structural reform.

IV.  CONCLUSION

The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 is not merely a tidying exercise. In the domain of motor vehicle law, it effects changes that are simultaneously beneficent to claimants (Sections 163, 164), corrective of past legislative error (Section 14), disciplinary toward authorities (Section 198A), and rationalist in its approach to offences (Sections 177, 196). The hard cap on MACT limitation will generate its own jurisprudence; the restoration of the licence grace period will close a chapter in insurer defences; and the premium-linked penalty for uninsured driving will require fresh actuarial and legal consideration.

Practitioners who act for insurers or claimants alike must attend to these amendments with immediacy. The Bill, once enacted, will not permit the luxury of gradualism. It requires revised advisory templates, updated pleading formats, and reconsidered compliance postures. The Jan Vishwas architecture, in its third iteration, has arrived at the motor vehicle law practitioner’s doorstep — and it demands to be let in.