Search Indian Acts
search_actsRead-only
Search Indian legislation down to the individual section: Central and State Acts plus the instruments of the principal regulators (SEBI, RBI, MCA, IRDAI, TRAI, DGFT). Use for any 'what does Indian law say' question. Supports boolean and phrase queries; filters by category, state, year and status. Returns sections with title, chapter and a sourceUrl pointing at the publisher's own document. The returned actId (e.g. 'IND_central_2065') feeds every acts tool. Cost: 2 credits.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| page | No | 1-based page number. `page * pageSize` may not exceed 100; narrow the query with filters to reach deeper matches. | |
| query | Yes | Search query. | |
| state | No | Jurisdiction slug. `central` is a value here, for Union legislation. Live counts per jurisdiction are on GET /acts/coverage. | |
| yearTo | No | Latest year of enactment to include, inclusive. | |
| actTitle | No | Filter by words in the act's title. Each word must appear, so `Bharatiya Nyaya` narrows to the Sanhita. | |
| category | No | Jurisdictional class. `repealed` and `spent` are accepted for backward compatibility and resolve against `actStatus` instead. Values: `central`, `state`, `regulatory`, `repealed`, `spent`. | |
| pageSize | No | Results per page (1-50). | |
| yearFrom | No | Earliest year of enactment to include, inclusive. Matched against the publisher's own year field, which is occasionally corrupt, so there is no lower bound and a value below 1800 is a legitimate way to find those rows. | |
| actStatus | No | Filter by the publisher's lifecycle status. Accepts one value or a list. This is the publisher's claim, not our verdict: see GET /acts/{actId}/status. Values: `in_force`, `repealed`, `superseded`, `spent`. | |
| matchType | No | One of `any`, `all`, `phrase`. Filters ranked candidates rather than re-querying the index, so `phrase` matches only within the top candidates and not every corpus match. Narrow with structured filters first when you need exhaustive phrase results. Defaults to `any`. | any |
| department | No | Accepts both regulator slugs such as `sebi` and `rbi` and free-text state department names such as `Law Department`. Values are not limited to a fixed enum or a uniform slug format. | |
| sectionType | No | Filter by structural kind of the passage. Accepts one value or a list. Values: `amendment_provision`, `article`, `body`, `chapter_heading`, `definition_clause`, `definitions`, `part_heading`, `preamble`, `schedule`, `section`, `short_title`, `sub_section`. | |
| legalSubject | No | Accepts one value or a list, matched against subject classifications assigned at ingest. | |
| isSubordinate | No | True for subordinate instruments only (rules, notifications, circulars, orders); false for principal acts only. Omit for both. | |
| provisionType | No | Filter by what the provision DOES. Accepts one value or a list. Values: `mandatory`, `general`, `prohibitory`, `overriding`, `discretionary`, `declaratory`. | |
| sectionNumber | No | Filter by exact section number. The publisher's own numbering, which is not an integer: `498A`, `376DA` and `2-A` all occur, and the alphabetic suffix is part of the number rather than a sub-provision. | |
| excludeRepealed | No | Drop provisions whose act the publisher records as repealed or spent. Off by default, because repealed law is still law that was in force and is routinely the thing being researched. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
No arguments | |||