In an important development, the Director of Legal Metrology, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, has turned down an appeal of Amazon made against the notices issued by the Department of Legal Metrology and has said that the department can proceed against Amazon, as per the law.
The Department of Legal Metrology noticed a violation of mandatory declaration required under rule 6(1) of the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules,2011 i.e. the complete address was not displayed on the digital platform of Amazon which is used for e-commerce transactions.
The department had issued a notice on November 19, 2020, and again a reminder notice on December 9 for giving the opportunity of hearing to Amazon. Rule 6 specifies mandatory mentioning of the address of manufacturer/packer etc.
B.C. Bhartia, National President, and Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary-General of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) while welcoming the order said that all sales at Amazon platform are controlled by them since there is no mention of details of the sellers and all the sales first directly go to Amazon and they decide to whom the order is to be forwarded.
By virtue of this fact, about 80% of sales are being happened through very few preferred sellers and therefore the argument of Amazon that sellers list their details etc. does not stand on legal legs, CAIT said.
However, CAIT believes that the paltry monetary penalty has no significance at all and therefore, it demanded that a 7-day ban on Amazon and other big e-commerce companies who are continuously offending the law and policies, should be imposed on them. Let there be an exemplary punishment.
Bhartia and Khandelwal said that though the order gives a lot of hope to the dying retail sector of the Country levying such a small amount on a foreign e-commerce giant for violating Indian law is nothing but a mockery of the judicial and administrative system.
“The punishment should be equal to the damage caused by them on our economy and it should have reflected a clear message to the foreign e-commerce players that anyone disobeying the law of the land will not be spared,” CAIT said.
