Draft E-Commerce Policy aiming at Data Protection has been introduced by the Government of India. Public feedback on it has been sought by March 9.
About:
Background: The draft policy comes after the government updated the FDI policy for online marketplaces in December which puts curbs on how large foreign e-tailers operate in India.
Objective: To strengthen consumer rights with regards to counterfeit products and the overall grievance mechanism, apart from putting in measures to stem the flow of goods through illegal means into the country.
Salient Features:
It puts restrictions on how foreign online retailers, including fast-growing Chinese e-commerce firms, operate in India.
Restricting cross border flow of data and leveraging it to help start-ups are also some of the other key measures proposed.
All e-commerce websites and applications available for downloading in India must have a registered business entity in India as the importer on record or the entity through which all sales in India are transacted.
Consumer/business payments from Indian banks and payment gateways to unauthorised and unregistered (GST non-compliant) sites/apps shall be barred.
If the seller fails to prove the authenticity of the product, the marketplace would have to take it down and remove all information of the same.
All e-commerce sites/apps available to Indian consumers (displaying prices in rupees) must have MRP on all packaged products, physical products and invoices.
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