The General Clauses Act, 1897 · GENERAL RULES OF CONSTRUCTION
In the measurement of any distance, for the purposes of any [Central Act] or Regulation made after the commencement of this Act, that distance shall, unless a different intention appears, be measured in a straight line on a horizontal plane.
Sections of the GCA are not classified one by one by any First Schedule. Part II of the First Schedule to the BNSS classifies offences under every other law by the punishment they carry — and the CRPC’s First Schedule sets out the same three bands.
If punishable with death, imprisonment for life, or imprisonment for more than 7 years.
If punishable with imprisonment for 3 years and upwards but not more than 7 years.
If punishable with imprisonment for less than 3 years or with fine only.
Read it against the punishment in the section above. Vidhara does not place a section in a band for you — that turns on the exact wording of its punishment, which is the section’s to say and not ours.
And a special or local law may provide otherwise: see BNSS section 5, which saves any special jurisdiction, power or procedure another law lays down.
Source & version
Official text: India Code (official) ↗
Official India Code text: The General Clauses Act, 1897, English PDF (bitstream 123456789/15374/1/the_general_clauses_act,_1897.pdf, 549,254 bytes, sha256 ef4645f24759ec1e...) fetched directly from indiacode.nic.in (Akamai edge, DNS via dns.google) on 2026-08-03. Extracted via pdftotext 26.07 -bbox and the @nexlex/ingest inline parser. Automated parse; footnotes and amendment history excluded. Spot-verified against the PDF; full clause-level proofread pending.
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