India's Customs Overhaul: 10 Changes That Could Reshape Trade

India's finance minister promised a full rewrite of the country's customs law in 2025. The current legislation dates to 1962, a product of a closed economy where the government controlled foreign exchange, rationed capital and treated each border crossing as a potential crime scene.

A Mint Premium article, written by two former Indian Revenue Service officers, offers a specific blueprint. The core argument: the 1962 Act treats a classification dispute or a valuation disagreement the same as gold smuggling. That DNA cannot be fixed by amendment alone. A new law needs to draw a line between trade facilitation and enforcement.

The authors propose ten changes. Here is how they fit together.

What the New Law Would Change

The first principle: commercial disputes should be settled by adjudication, not confiscation. Under the current statute, any omission that renders goods liable to confiscation triggers the same provisions applied to smugglers. The proposed fix is to make trade facilitation the norm and enforcement the exception.

Second, enforcement should shift from search-and-seizure to document-based inquiry. Authorities can summon invoices, contracts and technical literature instead of building cases on self-incriminating statements. The authors call intrusive enforcement in technical cases a source of avoidable litigation, not revenue.

Third, baggage rules at airports should be deleted. Checkpoints there earn negligible revenue, the authors argue, while creating a