Two Years Later: How India’s New Criminal Codes are Reshaping Public Justice

On July 1, 2026, India marked exactly two years since it did the unthinkable: tearing up its 150-year-old colonial criminal codes overnight. The transition from the British-era IPC and CrPC to the new BNS, BNSS, and BSA was billed as a historic leap toward a faster, more digitized justice system. Now, two years into this legal overhaul, fresh government performance data reveals a striking divide between high-tech policing successes and the grinding reality of courtroom confusion.

What are the new criminal laws replacing India's old penal code?

For more than a century and a half, India’s justice system was held hostage by colonial-era legislation. The Indian Penal Code of 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1898, and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 continued to govern long after independence. On July 1, 2024, the government officially retired these relics. In their place arose a new trinity of laws: the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA). Two years. Three new codes. Millions of unlearned habits. This was not a superficial rebranding, but a fundamental overhaul of the legal system's philosophical core, shifting the focus from punishment to justice.

How has the system performed after two years?

According to an official performance review released at the end of June 2026, the rollout has been highly uneven across India's vast geography. A small group of states has surged ahead in integrating the new digital workflows, while others are still bogged down in bureaucratic mud. The Ministry of Home Affairs assessed performance across administrative reforms and technological application, revealing a clear tier of leaders:

Haryana (The Frontrunner): Led by decisive retraining programs under DGP Ajay Singhal, Haryana emerged as the national leader, successfully migrating its entire police database and court filings to the new codes almost overnight.
Goa and Chandigarh: These smaller territories utilized their compact size to achieve near-total digital integration, eliminating paper files in favor of e-FIRs.
Assam and Punjab: Both states scored highly on operational efficiency, implementing mandatory body-worn cameras for forensic collections ahead of national deadlines.

What are the key procedural changes for citizens and police?

The ultimate goal of the BNSS and BSA is to compress the timeline from the initial police report to a final Supreme Court decision to under three years. To achieve this, the new codes introduced rigid, enforceable timelines. Investigations into sexual offenses against women must now be wrapped up within two months. More importantly, judges are legally required to deliver their final verdicts within thirty days of arguments concluding. No more endless delays. No more loose paper trails. No more colonial-era terminology. Furthermore, the BSA has dragged evidence collection into the modern age, making digital records, smartphone screenshots, and video recordings fully admissible without requiring complex paper certifications.

Why is this transition proving to be a massive headache?

Despite the official optimism, the reality on the ground is incredibly chaotic. India’s courts are currently drowning under a backlog of more than 5.58 crore pending cases, handled by just over 21,000 judges. Forcing understaffed, overworked local magistrates to master an entirely new legal vocabulary has slowed the machinery of justice to a crawl. Investigators who spent their entire careers writing 'IPC 420' for cheating must now remember to write 'BNS 318'. Some states, notably West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, have lagged behind the national average in implementation, creating a disjointed legal landscape where different rules seem to apply depending on where a crime is committed. It is a bold, necessary reform, but the friction of unlearning a century of habit will haunt Indian courtrooms for years to come.