The Confederation of Indian Industry has filed a 12-stage strategy to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and fund ministry Nirmala Sitharaman, including launch of a one-time settlement strategy and compounding supply.

“Divesting criminal penalties from company legislation — unless well-defined criminal activities are located — will reinforce confidence among young investors and entrepreneurs in performing business,” Vikram Kirloskar, President, CII said.

CII has sought intervention of different arms of the authorities to analyze the way the present criminal provisions in regulations could be treated as civil crimes together with penalties,” according to a statement on Sunday.

The guidelines cover 37 legislation and Acts which range from the Partnership Act of 1932 into the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of 2016, that it stated contains offences which are specialized or the ones who don’t influence public attention prejudicially.

Recently, some civil and commercial disputes are treated as criminal complaints, creating anxiety among business directors, youthful entrepreneurs and foreign investors,” it said.

Shifting the character of the punishments to make them rational will even decrease lawsuit and de-clog the judiciary, ” it included. Finance Union Nirmala Sitharama from the funding stated that the government would enact legislation to get rid of criminal liability against ones which deal with offences that are civil in character, based on a strategy already set up for those Companies Act.

“There’s been a disagreement about constructing into statutes criminal liability for functions which are civil in character. Therefore, for Companies Act, specific alterations are suggested to be created that will fix this. In the same way, other legislation would also be analyzed, in which these terms exist and efforts are made to fix them” Sitharaman stated in her budget address.

The CII has advocated 12-stage program, such as conversion of summons offences into compoundable offences, transparent mechanisms for settlement without admission of guilt to get technical offences, debut of dispute settlement mechanics and utilization of deferred prosecution agreements.

It’s called for reforms that would permit courts to award costs should they see frivolous or dilatory tactics by prosecutors.

The industry said other nations such as the US and the UK had allowed compounding of offences and plea bargaining to decrease litigation and enhance investor confidence.