Object, Scope, Application and Scheme of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023: Section 1, Parts, Chapters and Structure Explained

The purpose of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam is declared by its long title, its field of operation is fixed by Section 1, and its internal organisation is set out in four Parts comprising twelve chapters and one hundred and seventy sections, together with a Schedule. These three matters determine how every later provision of the Adhiniyam is to be read.

PARTS

Preliminary, Relevancy, Proof, Production

CHAPTERS

IEA had 11

170

SECTIONS

plus 1 Schedule

1. The Object of the Adhiniyam

1.1 The long title

Long title, Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023

'An Act to consolidate and to provide for general rules and principles of evidence for fair trial and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.'

Preamble, Indian Evidence Act, 1872

'Whereas it is expedient to consolidate, define and amend the law of Evidence; It is hereby enacted as follows...'

Two textual shifts follow from the comparison.

The words 'define and amend' have been dropped. The 1872 Act was consolidating, defining and amending: it was clearing away eleven fragmentary enactments and establishing a new vocabulary. The Adhiniyam has no comparable task, since it consolidates a body of law that is already coherent. The textual modesty of the long title is consistent with the substantial retention of the earlier Act.
The words 'for fair trial' are new. No Indian evidence statute had previously placed fair trial in its title. The expression imports into the interpretive framework of the statute the constitutional guarantee of a fair procedure under Article 21 and the protection against testimonial compulsion under Article 20(3). Where a provision of the Adhiniyam is ambiguous, the phrase supplies a principled basis for the construction that better secures a fair trial.

1.2 The objects of the law of evidence

Stephen identified two objects, which the courts continue to treat as governing and which carry across to the Adhiniyam unchanged.

To prevent laxity in the admission of evidence. Without exclusionary discipline a trial dissolves into an unbounded enquiry into everything known about the parties.
To confine the enquiry to the matters actually in dispute. Judicial time is finite, and relevancy is the device by which the enquiry is bounded.

To these the Adhiniyam adds a third object, expressed in its long title and given effect in Sections 57, 61 and 63: to render the law of proof adequate to circumstances in which most human communication leaves a digital trace.

📖 Ram Bihari Yadav v. State of Bihar, (1998) 4 SCC 517

Held: Rules of procedure and of evidence are handmaids of justice. Where the substance of the matter is clear, an evidentiary irregularity which does not go to the root of the matter and causes no prejudice should not be permitted to defeat the ends of justice.

Application: The 'fair trial' language of the long title reinforces this approach. The Adhiniyam is to be read purposively, in aid of a fair trial.

2. The Scope — Section 1

Section 1, BSA — Short title, application and commencement

(1) This Adhiniyam may be called the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.

(2) It applies to all judicial proceedings in or before any Court, including Courts-martial, but not to affidavits presented to any Court or officer, nor to proceedings before an arbitrator.

(3) It shall come into force on such date as the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint. [Notified as 1 July 2024.]

2.1 The limbs of the application clause

Limb	Effect	Position
All judicial proceedings	Civil and criminal alike; original, appellate and revisional	The Adhiniyam does not distinguish between civil and criminal proceedings except where a particular section does so, as in Sections 46 to 50 on character
In or before any Court	'Court' is defined in Section 2(1)(a) to include all Judges and Magistrates and all persons, except arbitrators, legally authorised to take evidence	The definition is functional rather than institutional; what matters is legal authorisation to take evidence
Including Courts-martial	Applies to all Courts-martial	A change from the Indian Evidence Act. Section 1 of the IEA excluded Courts-martial convened under the Army Act, the Naval Discipline Act, the Indian Navy (Discipline) Act, 1934 and the Air Force Act. The Adhiniyam omits that exclusion, so those Courts-martial are now within its application
Not to affidavits	An affidavit is not evidence for the purposes of the Adhiniyam	An affidavit therefore cannot ordinarily be read as substantive evidence at trial unless a statute or an order of the court so permits
Not to arbitration	Arbitral tribunals are not bound	Section 19(1) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 expressly provides that an arbitral tribunal is not bound by the Code of Civil Procedure or the Evidence Act; the position continues under the Adhiniyam by force of Section 8 of the General Clauses Act, 1897

The exclusion of affidavits does not render them worthless. It means only that the rules of relevancy and proof contained in the Adhiniyam do not govern their contents. Affidavits remain admissible where a specific statutory provision permits, as under Order XVIII Rule 4 and Order XIX of the Code of Civil Procedure and various special statutes. The reason for the exclusion is that an affidavit is not tested by cross-examination, and the architecture of the law of evidence presupposes that testimony is exposed to cross-examination.

2.2 The absence of an extent clause

Section 1 of the Indian Evidence Act opened with the words 'It extends to the whole of India'. Section 1 of the Adhiniyam contains no corresponding extent clause, and the Adhiniyam also omits the definition of 'India' formerly contained in Section 3(j) of the Act.

Two readings compete. The first, favoured by most commentators, treats the omission as deliberate and enabling: an evidence statute framed for circumstances in which the server holding a decisive record, its custodian, and the witness who speaks to it may each be located outside India ought not to be confined by a territorial extent clause. The second treats the omission as consequential drafting, since the Adhiniyam operates upon Indian courts in any event and requires no extent clause to do so.

⚠ Limits of the point

The Adhiniyam creates no offences and confers no jurisdiction, and no court has held that it operates extra-territorially. What the omission plausibly achieves is the removal of a textual obstacle to the reception of evidence originating outside India.

3. Bodies to Which the Adhiniyam Does Not Apply

Proceeding or body	Position	Authority
Affidavits	Excluded by Section 1(2)	Section 1(2), BSA
Arbitration proceedings	Excluded by Section 1(2), and reinforced by the definition of 'Court' in Section 2(1)(a), which expressly excludes arbitrators	Section 1(2) and Section 2(1)(a), BSA; Section 19(1), Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996
Departmental and domestic enquiries	Not applicable, but the principles of natural justice apply and a finding must rest upon some legal evidence	Union of India v. T.R. Varma, AIR 1957 SC 882
Disciplinary proceedings before enquiry officers	Not applicable; the technical rules of evidence do not bind, but a finding cannot rest on no evidence at all	State of Haryana v. Rattan Singh, (1977) 2 SCC 491
Industrial and labour tribunals	Not bound, but required to observe the principles underlying the law of evidence and to act on material of probative value	Bareilly Electricity Supply Co. Ltd. v. Workmen, (1971) 2 SCC 617
Commissions of Inquiry	Not applicable; the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952 supplies its own procedure	Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952
Revenue and administrative authorities	Not applicable unless the authority is legally authorised to take evidence, in which case it falls within Section 2(1)(a)	Section 2(1)(a), BSA
Proceedings under the Family Courts Act, 1984	Section 14 of that Act relaxes the application of the law of evidence, permitting receipt of any report, statement or document that in the opinion of the court assists in effectively dealing with the dispute	Section 14, Family Courts Act, 1984

📖 Union of India v. T.R. Varma, AIR 1957 SC 882

Facts: A departmental enquiry against a government servant was challenged on the ground that the rules of evidence had not been followed.

Held: The Evidence Act has no application to enquiries conducted by tribunals or domestic bodies. The principles of natural justice must nevertheless be observed: the party must be given an opportunity to adduce his own evidence and to cross-examine the witnesses against him, and no material may be used against him without an opportunity to explain it.

Ratio: Non-applicability of the law of evidence is not a licence for arbitrariness.

📖 State of Haryana v. Rattan Singh, (1977) 2 SCC 491

Held: In a domestic enquiry the strict and sophisticated rules of evidence under the Indian Evidence Act may not apply, and all material which is logically probative for a prudent mind is permissible. There is no allergy to hearsay evidence provided it has reasonable nexus and credibility. A finding cannot, however, rest on suspicion or on no evidence at all.

Ratio: The standard in a domestic enquiry is logical probative value, subject to the rule against a finding on no evidence.

📖 Bareilly Electricity Supply Co. Ltd. v. Workmen, (1971) 2 SCC 617

Held: Although a tribunal is not bound by the technical rules of the Evidence Act, it cannot ignore the basic principles of the law of evidence. A document produced without proof and without an opportunity to test it does not become evidence merely because the tribunal is not bound by the Act; the mere production of a balance sheet or statement does not prove its contents.

Ratio: Freedom from the Act is freedom from technicality, not from the requirement of proof.

4. Application to Pending Proceedings

4.1 The competing principles

Procedural statutes operate retrospectively. No litigant has a vested right in a particular mode of procedure. On this principle the Adhiniyam would govern all evidence recorded on or after 1 July 2024, irrespective of when the proceeding was instituted.
Section 6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897 preserves, on the repeal of an enactment, any right, privilege, obligation or liability acquired or incurred under it, and any legal proceeding or remedy in respect of such right, unless a different intention appears.
Section 170 of the Adhiniyam is the repeal and savings provision, and Section 8 of the General Clauses Act, 1897 directs that a reference to a repealed enactment be construed as a reference to the corresponding provision of the re-enacting statute.
Section 531(2) of the BNSS expressly saves appeals, applications, trials, inquiries and investigations pending on 1 July 2024, which continue under the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Adhiniyam contains no equally elaborate express saving.

4.2 The working position

The approach that has emerged in practice is that the applicable law of evidence is the law in force at the time the evidence is tendered and recorded, rather than the law in force when the cause of action arose or the case was instituted. In a trial commenced under the Indian Evidence Act in which evidence continues to be recorded after 1 July 2024, courts have generally applied the Adhiniyam to the recording of that evidence while preserving the validity of everything lawfully done earlier.

In relation to electronic records specifically, High Courts have noted that Section 63 of the Adhiniyam governs proceedings initiated after 1 July 2024, while the framework established in Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v. Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal, (2020) 7 SCC 1 continues to inform both regimes, Section 63 being a substantial re-enactment of Section 65B.

⚠ The position is not finally settled

There is at present no binding pronouncement of the Supreme Court on the transitional operation of the Adhiniyam as a whole. The position stated above rests on the general principle governing procedural statutes, on Sections 6 and 8 of the General Clauses Act, 1897, on Section 170 of the Adhiniyam, and on the contrast with Section 531(2) of the BNSS.

5. The Scheme — Four Parts and Twelve Chapters

The Adhiniyam groups its twelve chapters into four Parts. The Indian Evidence Act had chapters but no Parts, and its logical structure had to be inferred.

Part	Title	Chapters	Sections	Function
Part I	Preliminary	Chapter I	1–2	Short title, application, commencement and definitions
Part II	Relevancy of Facts	Chapter II	3–50	What may be proved — the exhaustive scheme of relevancy
Part III	On Proof	Chapters III–VI	51–103	How it may be proved — facts needing no proof, oral evidence, documentary evidence, and the exclusion of oral evidence by documentary evidence
Part IV	Production and Effect of Evidence	Chapters VII–XII	104–170	Who must prove it, who may be examined, and with what consequence — burden of proof, estoppel, witnesses, examination of witnesses, improper admission, repeal and savings

5.1 The chapter map

Chapter	Sections	Subject	Corresponding IEA chapter
I	1–2	Preliminary — short title, application, commencement and definitions	Chapter I (ss. 1–4)
II	3–50	Relevancy of Facts — closely connected facts (4–14), admissions (15–25), statements by persons who cannot be called as witnesses (26–27), statements made under special circumstances (28–32), how much of a statement is to be proved (33), judgments of courts when relevant (34–38), opinions of third persons (39–45), character (46–50)	Chapter II (ss. 5–55)
III	51–53	Facts which need not be proved — judicial notice and admitted facts	Chapter III (ss. 56–58)
IV	54–55	Of Oral Evidence	Chapter IV (ss. 59–60)
V	56–93	Of Documentary Evidence — proof of contents (56–73), public documents (74–77), presumptions as to documents (78–93)	Chapter V (ss. 61–90A)
VI	94–103	Of the Exclusion of Oral Evidence by Documentary Evidence	Chapter VI (ss. 91–100)
VII	104–120	Of the Burden of Proof, including presumptions as to legitimacy, dowry death and absence of consent	Chapter VII (ss. 101–114A)
VIII	121–123	Estoppel — general, tenant and licensee, acceptor of a bill and bailee	Chapter VIII (ss. 115–117)
IX	124–139	Of Witnesses — competence, compellability, privileges and production of documents	Chapter IX (ss. 118–134)
X	140–168	Of the Examination of Witnesses — order of examination, cross-examination, leading questions, refreshing memory, hostile witnesses, and the Judge's power to put questions (Section 168)	Chapter X (ss. 135–166)
XI	169	Of Improper Admission and Rejection of Evidence	Chapter XI (s. 167)
XII	170	Repeal and Savings	No corresponding IEA chapter

The Adhiniyam has twelve chapters against the eleven of the Indian Evidence Act, the additional chapter being Chapter XII on repeal and savings. Chapter II is the largest, comprising forty-eight sections, followed by Chapter V with thirty-eight. Section 169 provides that the improper admission or rejection of evidence shall not of itself be a ground for a new trial or reversal of a decision, if it appears to the court that there was sufficient other evidence to justify the decision, or that the rejected evidence would not have varied it.

6. The Schedule

The Indian Evidence Act had no Schedule. The Adhiniyam has one, prescribing the standard-form certificate required by Section 63(4) for the admissibility of electronic records tendered as secondary evidence.

Part of the Schedule	Signatory	Content
Part A	The person in charge of the computer or communication device, or the person managing the relevant activities	Identification of the electronic record, the manner of its production, particulars of the device, and the hash value of the record
Part B	An expert	A declaration authenticating the record, its integrity, and the process by which the hash value was generated

A hash value is a cryptographic digest of a file. Any alteration to the file, however small, produces an entirely different hash. Disclosure of the hash therefore permits the court and the opposing party to verify at any later stage that the record produced is identical to the record originally seized. Current forensic practice uses algorithms such as SHA-256.

📖 Pune Bar Assn. v. Union of India, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1297 (decided 22 May 2026)

Facts: The Pune Bar Association challenged Section 63(4) read with the Schedule as manifestly arbitrary, contending that the requirement of the hash value in Part A and of a signed expert declaration in Part B rendered electronic evidence practically unavailable to ordinary litigants, particularly if Part B could be signed only by an Examiner of Electronic Evidence notified under Section 79A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, of whom very few exist.

Held: A three-Judge Bench (Surya Kant, CJI, Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi, JJ.) upheld the provision. Electronic records are a unique species of evidence liable to continuous mutation, and the certificate requirement bears a rational nexus with the object of preserving authenticity and integrity. Reading Sections 39(1) and 39(2) harmoniously, the Court held that Part B is not confined to Section 79A notified Examiners; any person possessing special skill and expertise in computer science or cyber forensics may sign, provided the court is satisfied of the credentials on unimpeachable material. The contrary view of the Madras High Court in R. v. B. was held not to operate as binding precedent, and the scope of expert certification under Part B was left open.

Effect: The Schedule is judicially confirmed as an operative part of the statutory scheme.

7. The Sequence of the Statute

The Adhiniyam is arranged in the order in which questions arise for a trial court considering a piece of material.

Step	Question	Governing provisions
1	Is this a fact, and is it a fact in issue or a relevant fact?	Sections 2(1)(f), 2(1)(g), 3
2	Is it relevant under some head of Part II?	Sections 4–50
3	If relevant, is it admissible under the rules of proof?	Sections 51–103
4	Does it need to be proved at all, or is it judicially noticed or admitted?	Sections 51–53
5	If oral, is the evidence direct?	Sections 54–55
6	If documentary, is it primary or secondary, and is the mode of proof satisfied?	Sections 56–73; for electronic records, Sections 57, 61, 63 and the Schedule
7	Does documentary evidence exclude the oral evidence offered?	Sections 94–103
8	Who bears the burden of proving it, and has any presumption shifted it?	Sections 104–120
9	Is any party estopped from denying it?	Sections 121–123
10	Is the witness competent and compellable, and does any privilege attach?	Sections 124–139
11	Was the witness properly examined and cross-examined?	Sections 140–168
12	If evidence was wrongly admitted or rejected, does that vitiate the decision?	Section 169

8. Relevancy and Admissibility

Part II is headed 'Relevancy of Facts' and Part III 'On Proof'. The distinction between the two concepts is fundamental to the scheme.

	Relevancy	Admissibility
Nature	A question of logic and probative connection, as filtered by the statute	A question of law and policy — whether the statute permits reception
Located in	Part II (Sections 3–50)	Parts III and IV (Sections 51 onwards)
Test	Does this fact make a fact in issue more or less probable, in one of the ways the Adhiniyam recognises?	Even if relevant, does any rule exclude it, and has the prescribed mode of proof been followed?
Discretion	The heads of relevancy are exhaustive; a fact not falling within Sections 4 to 50 is not relevant however logically probative	Largely rule-bound; the court has no general discretion to admit relevant but inadmissible material
Relationship	All admissible evidence is relevant	Not all relevant evidence is admissible

Relevancy is the wider concept and admissibility the narrower. Relevancy rests on logic and probability as regulated by Part II; admissibility rests on the rules of law contained in Parts III and IV. A confession made to a police officer illustrates the distinction: it is plainly relevant to the question of guilt, yet Section 23(1) renders it inadmissible, the exclusion resting on policy concerning the risk of custodial coercion rather than on any want of probative value.

9. Related Topics and Provisions

Topic or provision	Connection
Introduction to the BSA, 2023	The definitions in Section 2 that Section 1 presupposes, and the correspondence table between the IEA and the BSA
History and Evolution of the Law of Evidence in India	The origin of the preamble and of the exclusions contained in Section 1
Sections 3–50, BSA	Relevancy of facts, the largest chapter of the Adhiniyam
Sections 57, 61 and 63 and the Schedule, BSA	Electronic and digital evidence, and the certificate considered in Part 6 above
Section 19(1), Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996	The statutory counterpart of the arbitration exclusion in Section 1(2)
Section 14, Family Courts Act, 1984	Statutory relaxation of the law of evidence in family proceedings
Sections 6 and 8, General Clauses Act, 1897	The effect of repeal, and the reading of IEA precedents into corresponding BSA provisions
Section 531, BNSS, 2023	The express savings clause whose absence from the Adhiniyam gives rise to the transitional question