India’s banking law has struggled to keep pace with the way banks create, store and produce records. The Bankers’ Books Evidence Bill, 2026, introduced in the Lok Sabha by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on August 3, seeks to replace the Bankers’ Books Evidence Act, 1891. Its purpose is narrow but useful: to settle how banking records should be authenticated and presented in legal proceedings when the records may never have existed on paper.
The case for replacement is stronger than the age of the existing law suggests. Parliament has amended the 1891 Act several times. A 2002 amendment recognised records stored through mechanical or electronic data-retrieval systems, including at backup and disaster-recovery sites. The law is therefore dated, but it is not wholly confined to handwritten ledgers.
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The problem is that banking technology has moved beyond the categories added over the years. Records may now sit across core banking systems, data centres, cloud services and backup facilities. The statute has accumulated technological references without establishing a durable rule for treating bankers records as evidence.
Bankers’ Books Evidence Bill widens the definition
The Bill proposes to cover records maintained in physical, electronic, digital, virtual, cloud-based or any other form. The last phrase matters. It reduces the risk that another storage technology will require another amendment.
This approach also recognises how banking has changed. Customers open accounts remotely, authenticate documents electronically and transfer money through mobile applications. UPI and other payment systems produce large volumes of records without creating conventional documents. A dispute over an unauthorised payment, loan default or suspected fraud will usually turn on a trail assembled from several electronic systems.
The existing Bankers’ Books Evidence Act allows certified copies of entries to be admitted without requiring banks to produce original books. The Bill retains that principle while proposing standard certificate formats. It would permit manual, digital or electronic signatures and allow electronic records to be produced either electronically or in physical form.
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Standardisation is more consequential than it sounds. Courts need to know who has certified a record, how it was retrieved and whether the prescribed process was followed. Banks need a common procedure that does not vary with the storage medium or the forum hearing the case. The Bill addresses the form of authentication without asking judges to interpret each new banking technology.
Courts and bankers records
The Bill also defines the “special cause” under which a court may order a bank officer to produce bankers’ books or appear as a witness when the bank is not a party to the proceeding. The court must record the reason in writing.
The protection is built into the structure of the 1891 law, which sought to spare banks from producing original records and sending officers to court in routine cases. The Bill makes the exception more explicit. Certified records should normally suffice. A court may still demand the books or an officer’s testimony when the circumstances justify it.
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The quality of the provision will depend on the statutory definition of special cause and its application by courts. A broad exception would preserve the burden the Bill intends to reduce. A narrow one could restrict access when the authenticity or completeness of a record is disputed. Requiring a written order at least makes the decision open to scrutiny.
The Bill would also allow the Union government to extend the law to specified entities or classes of entities operating in the financial sector, subject to prescribed conditions. That provision reflects the spread of financial activity beyond commercial banks. Payment system operators and other RBI-regulated entities may hold records that are central to a transaction even when they do not fit the conventional definition of a bank.
Such extension should depend on the records held and the entity’s role in the transaction. A general power covering the financial sector could otherwise blur the distinction between banks, payment companies and securities intermediaries, which operate under different statutes and regulatory duties.
The Bankers’ Books Evidence Bill is a consolidation rather than a legal discovery. Electronic banking records already receive recognition under existing law. The Bill’s contribution lies in technology-neutral definitions, common certification rules and clearer limits on summoning bank officers. These are modest changes, but they deal with recurring friction between banking practice and courtroom procedure.