Nearly half a century has passed since Madhya Pradesh issued the notification defining the legal powers of its Economic Offences Wing, or EOW. The state government has now decided to amend that May 31, 1977 notification and bring it in line with the new criminal-law framework.
Madhya Pradesh is giving its premier economic-crime investigation agency the powers of a new law. The question is whether the EOW will now be able to change its record and its pace as well. The Mohan Yadav Cabinet has approved an amendment to the Home Department’s 1977 notification, enabling the EOW to proceed under the relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, instead of the corresponding sections of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The Cabinet approved the amendment on August 25.
Figures placed before the state Assembly paint a startling picture thousands of complaints reach the EOW, only a small fraction move to preliminary or criminal investigation, even fewer reach the courts, and in some cases judgments take decades.
Congress MLA Pratap Grewal, who raised the issue, asked what had happened to the remaining complaints and alleged that the figures themselves raised serious questions over the EOW’s pace of investigation and disposal. The real question is how many of these complaints actually complete the journey from complaint to inquiry, FIR, investigation, charge sheet, trial and conviction. At every stage, the number appears to shrink dramatically. This is not the first time the EOW’s own figures have raised uncomfortable questions.
Between 2020 and June 2026, the Economic Offences Wing received a record 23,261 complaints, according to figures disclosed in a written reply in the Assembly on behalf of Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav. Of these, only 3,018 complaints were registered for further examination, while 756 were closed after scrutiny.
Instead of directly beginning an investigation into the allegations, the complaint was forwarded to the Urban Development and Housing Department for examination. The complainant argued that he had already approached the same department before turning to the EOW. Congress MLA Pankaj Upadhyay questioned whether sending a complaint back to the very department connected with the allegations could weaken independent scrutiny rather than strengthen it.
In February, NDTV reported how between 2020 and January 2026, the EOW had received 19,775 complaints relating to corruption and economic offences. Of these, only 2,624 complaints, or around 14 per cent, were formally registered, while criminal cases were registered in just 566 instances. That means only about 2.8 per cent of the total complaints resulted in an FIR or criminal case. Put differently, more than 97 per cent of complaints in that dataset did not reach the stage of criminal-case registration. One of the questions raised in the Assembly referred to a complaint supported by an affidavit and 342 pages of documents that had been submitted to the EOW in June 2025.
