Draft e-commerce norms to end crony capitalism: CAIT

New Delhi, Jul 26 (KNN) Terming the draft e-commerce rules as a perfect set of guidelines for conducting structured and transparent e-commerce business in India in future, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has said the rules will shatter the dreams of few companies to become new version of East India Company and will bring an end to crony capitalism that exist in current e-commerce landscape of India.

The traders’' body in a set of its submissions made to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs in response to draft e-commerce rules strongly called for a monitoring mechanism to monitor compliance of rules by one & all in e-commerce business and in the event of violation.

''The said mechanism should also be empowered to take penal & other actions,'' CAIT further suggested.

CAIT National President B C Bhartia & Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal lambasted the foreign funded e-tailers and some of the prominent Industry Chambers for their stereo type weeping by giving lame arguments to oppose draft rules.

They said that it is a sinister trap of vested interests companies duly supported by Industry Chambers to dislodge the draft rules.

''However, more than 8 crore small businesses of the country are committed to oppose any wrong narrative if anyone tries to build around the draft rules,'' the added.

The duo also said that inclusive growth of e-commerce business in India largely depends on 4 core fundamentals i.e. Transparent operations of e-commerce platforms,  Easy accessibility and adequate grievance redressal by e-commerce entities, Non- Discriminatory Access of Marketplace Platforms to all stakeholders of the value-chain, Avoidance of conflict of interest between marketplace platforms, sellers & various service providers on the platform.

They further said that any marketplace having an equity or economic interest in any entity should not be allowed to sell goods on the said marketplace and it should be treated as “affiliated entity".

In its submission, the CAIT argued that mandatory registration of e-commerce entities conducting business through any e-mode will lay the substantial foundation of a well-defined eco-system and the extent of e-commerce landscape can easily be gauged with the registration process and shall protect consumers from rogue/fraudulent e-commerce companies.

Transparency should be the hallmark of any business activity and every e-commerce marketplace must therefore act in a transparent manner with respect to all stakeholders, namely - the customer, sellers, logistics partners and payment gateways, it said.

''Therefore, all sorts of agreement between the platform and sellers registered on the said platform should be disclosed in a transparent manner disclosing all information about the sellers and products to the consumer at the pre-purchase stage,'' the organisation said.

Further, the search algorithm used by the e-commerce marketplace must be transparently disclosed and displayed to the users so that they can make informed choices.

Among other suggestions, CAIT has said that it must be ensured that consumers can reach out to senior grievance redressal officers of the marketplace entities to resolve their concerns and therefore the provision of appointment of Grievance Officer, Nodal Officer and Compliance Officer is laudable.