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A government ministry has proposed decriminalising offences under the Collection of Statistics Act 2008 as part of the government’s efforts to rationalise legislations to promote the ease of doing business.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has invited public comments on its draft proposal by October 30.
The proposal to amend sections of the act will decriminalise offences like obstructing or deceiving statistics officers by doing away with the provision of simple imprisonment up to six months. However, the MoSPI proposed to increase the fines for the offences to Rs 2000-Rs 20,000 for individuals and Rs 10,000-Rs 100,000 for companies. The fines now are Rs 2,000 for individuals and Rs 10,000 for companies.
