Central government ministries, departments and states have been asked to relook at the laws and regulations with an objective to reduce the regulatory compliance burden for industry, an official said. “Reducing the regulatory compliance burden is a priority area for the government. There are a lot of compliance burdens and we have to reduce that. Every ministry is doing this on a war footing,” a senior official in the commerce and industry ministry said.

Citing an example, the official said the ministry handles several Acts such as two laws for Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organization (PESO), intellectual property rights, and boilers.

“So we are looking at wherever there is any section where criminal prosecution is involved, can it be relooked. Whether it is necessary to have criminal punishments or civil punishment will also do like penalty or something else,” the official added.

Chief Secretaries of all the states have been advised to identify burdensome regulations and ways to reduce that burden for businesses.

The ministries and states would have to examine central laws which can be repealed or subsumed or replaced.

Issues which are being looked into for the exercise include removing licence renewals or increasing its periodicity, risk-based inspection system, simplification of number of filings, removal or rationalisation of maintaining registers/records, and minimising or eliminating number of display requirements for licences.