By I-Day, many bottlenecks to clear for firms | Economic Times

If the central government has its way, a multitude of compliance burdens on companies and individuals will turn history by August 15. The deadline is critical as India is set to celebrate its 75th Independence Day this year with a likely focus on “ease of living” and “ease of doing business”, among others.On the cards are decriminalisation of regulations that prescribe a jail term for minor offences, the use of blockchain in land registry, deployment of artificial intelligence in detecting frauds, availability of pre-populated tax return forms, just to name a few. Separately, states are urged to downsize their regulations so that businesses can save time and money. 82121776ET has learnt that the finance ministry has handpicked 9,732 compliances to be tweaked or erased, or subsumed, from a total of 24,853 compliances that come under the purview of the Centre as calculated by human resources firm TeamLease. On the to-do list prepared by the finance ministry, 37% compliances fall under its own purview, with the rest coming under the ministries of corporate affairs, commerce and industry, health and family welfare, et al.Further, 37 Acts with 212 provisions have been identified for decriminalisation; the Companies Act 2013, for instance, has 46 such provisions, according to an analysis of the finance ministry seen by ET. Also, 67 central and state laws are believed to be redundant, making them a fit case for repeal, amendment or subsumption. For example, the ministry of environment, forest and climate change has eight such laws. Among the states, Maharashtra has 11, followed by Karnataka (9) and Uttar Pradesh (8).According to TeamLease data shared with central ministries and states, there are 68,549 compliances in India, all governed by 678 Acts and rules, of which 43,696 belong to states.“NITI Aayog has contacted all state governments to identify state-level regulations and compliances that are redundant or cumbersome. These need to be removed as these discourage investors by making the ecosystem less investor-friendly. It could be of any sector, be it manufacturing, services or agriculture,” says Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog Rajiv Kumar, refusing to talk about any deadline. “The idea is to reduce regulatory and compliance burden both at the central and state governments’ level,” he adds.The Phase-I of the project encompassing simplification and digitisation of compliances was just over on March 31. Deadline for Phase-2 is August 15.