Short answer. Republic Act No. 10640 cut the required witnesses from three to two. The original law needed a media representative, a Department of Justice representative and an elected public official all present. The amended text needs an elected public official plus one representative — either the National Prosecution Service or the media.
What the law says
with an elected public official and a representative of the National Prosecution Service or the media who shall be required to sign the copies of the inventory and be given a copy thereof
RA 9165, Section 21 — Chain Of Custody. Read the full provision →
What the original 2002 text required
As first written, Section 21 required the apprehending team to inventory and photograph the seized items in the presence of the accused, and of three separate witnesses: a representative from the media, a representative from the Department of Justice, and any elected public official. All three had to sign the inventory. In practice this was hard to satisfy at odd hours in far-flung places, and prosecutions were routinely lost when one of the three could not be produced. The rigidity of the three-witness rule is the problem the amendment set out to fix.
What Republic Act No. 10640 did
The 2014 amendment rewrote the witness clause. The inventory and photograph must now be taken with an elected public official and a representative of the National Prosecution Service or the media who shall be required to sign the copies of the inventory and be given a copy thereof. Two changes sit in that sentence. The number of required witnesses drops from three to two. And the Department of Justice representative is replaced by a representative of the National Prosecution Service or the media — so the team needs only one of those two, not both.
The saving clause was carried into the statute
The original saving clause lived only in the implementing rules. RA 10640 lifted it into the law itself. The amended section provides that noncompliance of these requirements under justifiable grounds, as long as the integrity and the evidentiary value of the seized items are properly preserved by the apprehending officer/team, shall not render void and invalid such seizures and custody over said items. That gives the rule statutory footing, but it is not a blanket excuse: the prosecution still has to show both a justifiable ground for the lapse and that the drugs' integrity survived it.
Why the timing of a case matters
Because the amendment took effect in 2014, the witness rule that applies depends on when the seizure happened. A seizure before the amendment is judged against the three-witness requirement; one after, against the two-witness version. Anyone reviewing an older inventory sheet should first check its date against the effectivity of RA 10640 before deciding whether the correct witnesses were present. The place of inventory and the signing requirements are governed by the same amended section, so the whole clause has to be read as it stood on the date of the seizure.