NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a plea seeking direction to the Centre to formulate a law mandating all e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart to display ‘country of origin’ on the products they sell so as to allow consumers to make informed decisions.
A bench of Chief Justice of India S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian issued notice to the Centre and sought its response. The plea refers to influx of junk from China via e-commerce sites as also calls from various quarters for boycotting products from that country in view of India-China conflict in Ladakh which has led to loss of lives of Indian soldiers.
Petitioner in-person Divya Jyoti Singh told the court that the direction be issued for formulating a law asking all e-commerce industry/portals who are selling goods in India, through any channel, to display the ‘country of origin’ label in such a way that it is legible to consumers and they can read it.
As per the plea Section 2(9) of the consumer Protection Act, 2019, consumer rights include the right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price of goods, products or services, as the case may be, so as to protect the consumer against unfair trade practices.
It added that the entire country is united and standing together showing allegiance to the motherland, as an effect of the loss of lives of our soldiers owing to the India-Chinese conflict in the Ladakh region and thus are running a nationwide campaign pertaining to the boycott of all the Chinese products / mobile apps through which China generates revenue in Crores.