Sunday, September 14, 2014

IT Act To Be Amended To Accommodate E-Commerce Concerns

Information technology Act 2000 (IT Act 2000) carries provisions pertaining to e-governance and e-commerce. However, IT Act 2000 has outlives its importance and it is high time to enact dedicated laws for e-governance and e-commerce in India. This though of dedicated laws brings discomfort and uneasiness to the Indian government and hence it always chooses the easy path of bring piecemeal amendments in the existing laws. Of course, this is not a productive exercise in the long run and it brings unforeseen and unproductive results.

Now once again Indian government has decided to amend the IT Act 2000 to accommodate the e-commerce concerns. We have no dedicated e-commerce laws in India and barring few provisions in the IT Act, 2000, e-commerce in India is largely unregulated. As a result regulatory violation by Indian e-commerce websites is in abundance. In fact, e-commerce websites of India are under enforcement directorate scanner.

Indian government intends to streamline e-commerce laws in India by bringing a law in the form of Communications Convergence Bill. The government plans to modify the IT Act, 2000 to provide legal recognition for transactions carried out using electronic data interchange and other means of electronic communications in a more explicit manner. It also aims to draft a set of globally acceptable guidelines to increase the legal predictability for e-commerce and adopt the United Nations General Assembly's (UNGA) recommended Model Law on Electronic Commerce (MLFC).

This is a good policy decision by Indian government and it would bring uniformity and legal certainty among e-commerce entrepreneurs of India.