Statutes and government notifications carry official pronouncements of public-nature facts — that a road has been declared national, that a village has been included in a district, that a person holds a specified office. Section 31 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) makes such statements relevant. And in one of the more thorough decolonising rewrites of Chapter II, the BSA has stripped out the section's colonial machinery — Acts of the UK Parliament, notifications of the Crown Representative, the London Gazette, and Gazettes of British Dominions and colonies — leaving a clean, self-contained framework of Indian Central and State Acts and their Official Gazettes, now expressly extended to electronic and digital publications.
31. Relevancy of statement as to fact of public nature contained in certain Acts or notifications. When the Court has to form an opinion as to the existence of any fact of a public nature, any statement of it, made in a recital contained in any Central Act or State Act or in a Central Government or State Government notification appearing in the respective Official Gazette or in any printed paper or in electronic or digital form purporting to be such Gazette, is a relevant fact.
The change: colonial machinery out, Indian-only framework in
Section 31 corresponds to Section 37 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (IEA). The BPRD BSA-to-IEA correspondence table records that the words "any Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom or in any Central Act, Provincial Act or a State Act or in a Government notification or notification by the Crown Representative appearing in the Official Gazette or in any printed paper purporting to be the London Gazette or the Government Gazette of any Dominion, colony, or possession of His Majesty is a relevant fact" have been replaced with "any Central Act or State Act or in a Central Government or State Government notification appearing in the respective Official Gazette or in any printed paper or in electronic or digital form purporting to be such Gazette, is a relevant fact." Three separate reforms are contained in that single edit.
| Element | Section 37, IEA | Section 31, BSA |
|---|---|---|
| Legislative sources | Acts of Parliament of the UK; Central/Provincial/State Acts | Central Acts and State Acts only |
| Notifying authority | "A Government notification or notification by the Crown Representative" | Central Government or State Government notification |
| Gazette references | Official Gazette, London Gazette, or Government Gazette of any Dominion, colony, or possession of His Majesty | The respective Official Gazette (Central or State) |
| Form of publication | Printed paper only | Printed paper or in electronic or digital form purporting to be such Gazette |
Why the rewrite matters
The old text carried through, into the 21st century, the constitutional architecture of colonial India — legislative primacy of the UK Parliament, Crown Representative notifications, and the London Gazette as an authoritative publication for Indian courts. In post-Independence India, none of that machinery is operational. Retaining the wording in the 1872 Act was more archaeological than functional — a party could not, in practice, tender an "Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom" or a "London Gazette" as authoritative for an Indian public-nature fact anyway. Section 31 completes what history had already accomplished and formally removes those references. In their place, it puts a clean, exhaustive statement of the Indian sources that actually publish public-nature facts today: Central Acts, State Acts, Central Government notifications, State Government notifications, and their respective Official Gazettes.
The digital extension
The second reform is the addition of "electronic or digital form" to the recognised forms in which the Gazette may appear. The Government of India publishes the e-Gazette (egazette.gov.in) as its official electronic Gazette, and most State Governments publish their Gazettes electronically. Section 31 now expressly recognises those electronic and digital publications as within its reach, provided the publication purports to be the relevant Official Gazette. This aligns Section 31 with the section's neighbouring provision — Section 32 — which also received "including in electronic or digital form" in the same recodification exercise, and with the wider BSA policy of paralleling "electronic or digital" with "printed" wherever public and official material is concerned.
The three qualifying conditions
How Section 31 interacts with judicial notice
Section 52 (Facts of which Court shall take judicial notice) already requires the court to take judicial notice of "all laws in force in the territory of India" and, under its new clause (b), of India's international treaties and decisions at international bodies. Section 31 handles the different category of public-nature facts recited in Indian statutes and notifications — matters that may not qualify as "laws" in the judicial-notice sense but that appear in official Indian sources with sufficient formality to be relevant. The two provisions work together: Section 52 relieves the court of proof for the legal instruments themselves; Section 31 admits statements of public-nature facts contained within those instruments as relevant material.
Placement in Chapter II
Section 31 opens a small documentary-relevancy trio within Chapter II. Section 30 admits statements in maps, charts and plans; Section 31 handles official Indian legal-source publications of public-nature facts; Section 32 handles foreign statutes and reports of foreign court rulings. All three take advantage of the same broad recognition that certain authoritative documentary sources are more reliable than ad hoc testimony, and each defines carefully what qualifies. Sections 31 and 32 both received parallel "electronic or digital form" updates in the recodification.
Key Takeaways
- Substantial decolonising rewrite: UK Parliament Acts, Crown Representative notifications, London Gazette and Dominion/colony/possession Gazettes have been dropped from Section 37 IEA.
- Clean Indian framework: Central and State Acts, Central and State Government notifications, and their respective Official Gazettes are now the only qualifying sources.
- Digital publications expressly covered: "electronic or digital form purporting to be such Gazette" recognises e-Gazettes and state electronic Gazettes.
- Three qualifying conditions: public-nature fact, appearing in a defined official Indian source, and relevant to a question the court has to answer.
- Works with Section 52: the two provisions cover different but complementary aspects of official Indian material.
Conclusion
Section 31 is a rare BSA provision that does both housekeeping and substantive updating in the same edit. By clearing out the colonial-era references that had lingered in Section 37 of the 1872 Act, it makes the provision faithful to the constitutional reality of post-Independence India. By adding "electronic or digital form", it makes the provision workable in an era in which the Official Gazette increasingly appears on a screen rather than on paper. What emerges is a leaner, more accurate, and more usable rule — one better matched both to the source material Indian courts actually encounter and to the country in which they sit. And with this article, the descending run through Sections 50 to 31 of Chapter II is complete; only the remaining sections of Chapter II (3–30) and the two sections of Chapter I stand between the project and full coverage of the BSA.