The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) is the Indian law of evidence, replacing the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 with effect from 1 July 2024. The BSA largely preserves the substantive rules of the IEA on relevancy, admissibility, burden of proof, and documentary evidence, while renumbering provisions and consolidating the regime for electronic evidence.
**Continuity with the IEA.** Most of the substantive evidentiary law — what evidence is relevant, when a witness is competent, how documents are proved, how presumptions work — carries forward substantially unchanged from the Indian Evidence Act. Practitioners familiar with IEA doctrine can apply the same principles to BSA matters; the numbers have changed but the law largely has not.
**Electronic evidence consolidation.** One significant update: the BSA treats electronic evidence more systematically, bringing together provisions that were scattered across the Evidence Act and the Information Technology Act. Admissibility of electronic records, the certificate requirement under (what was) Section 65B IEA, and the treatment of digital signatures have been consolidated.
**Applicability rule.** Consistent with the BNS and BNSS: the BSA applies to proceedings for offences committed on or after 1 July 2024. Pending cases continue under the Indian Evidence Act. For trials that span the transition date (cognizance before, evidence after), the evidence framework applicable at trial is normally determined by the date of the offence — but specific procedural questions can arise and the transitional rules merit checking case-by-case.
Like the BNS and BNSS, the BSA is a 2024-onwards regime that practitioners must hold alongside legacy IEA knowledge for pending matters.