Fair treatment of offences

Govt's move on decriminalisation is welcome

While presenting the Union Budget for 2020-21 earlier this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made the commitment that various offences under the Companies Act and other laws would be decriminalised. The Department of Financial Services has now sought public comment on its plans to change the treatment of offences under 39 sections of 19 different laws. The idea is to bring them into the domain of administrative adjudication. The threat of jail time will also be replaced by fines. This follows up on actions of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs over the last three years that made similar recommendations for