As the year 2002 ends and a new
year dawns, a threat lurking on the horizon needs to be brought into the
attention of the Indian Netizens.
This comes in the form of the
Indian Post Office Amendment Bill (IPOAB) which is due for passage in the
Parliament and which could affect E-Mail services and E-payment services.
If Netizens and Internet Service
Providers continue to sleep over Cyber Regulations when they are under
discussion, they will be regretting later when the laws get enacted.
More often these laws will be in
hibernation for some time until the private sector builds up a business base and
one day some official will suddenly realize that there is a law to ban E-Mail
services by any body other than the Indian Postal Authority and there is a law
requiring every E-Mail service provider to register with the Post Master General
and pay a certain fees.
At that time since lot of
investments would have already sunk in, there will be no option but to regularize
the transactions with the payment of a huge arrears of payment.
It is therefore necessary for
the industry to take a serious look at the provisions of this Bill and ensure
that it cannot be misused by some future Government to arm twist private sector
industries.
Stated Objectives:
The IPOAB is being enacted ostensibly
to bring about qualitative improvement in the services with more
consumer-friendly features which are sought to be achieved within the basic
legal framework provided by the IPO Act.
The Bill acknowledges that Post Office is presently required to fulfill the
following objectives:—
(a) enable the common man to communicate at an affordable price;
(b)
achieve financial self-sufficiency, reducing its dependence on budgetary
support;
(c) extend the benefits of electronic media communication to larger
segments of customers in the country.
Key Amendments:
Some of the important amendments proposed in the Indian Post Office
(Amendment) Bill, 2002 affecting the Netizens are:—
(i) preservation of exclusive privilege of the Central Government to
convey all letters with certain exceptions;
(ii) empowering the Department of Posts to introduce e-enabled services
bridging the digital divide in the country;
The above amendments have to be seen in the context of addition of the new
subsection (1)(aaa) which states
-the expression
“electronic post” with reference to receiving and transmitting message by post
includes any message sent, received, collected, transmitted or stored in
media, magnetic, optical, computer memory, micro film, computer generated
micro fiche or any other similar device, through computer system or secure
computer network;'
-the expression
“letter” means any written communication to and from any person to any
specific address and includes letter-card, post-card and envelope but does not
include newspapers and parcels.
-the expression “postal
article” includes a letter, letter-card, post-card, newspaper, book packet,
parcel and every article or thing transmissible by post, or by any person or
body authorised to carry such articles under the Act.
The most disturbing clause is the Exclusive Privilege clause which states,
Wherever within India posts
or postal communications are established by the Central Government, the
Central Government shall have the exclusive privilege of conveying by post,
from one place to another, all letters except in the following cases, and
shall also have the exclusive privilege of performing all the incidental
services of receiving, collecting, sending, despatching and delivering all
letters, except in the following cases, that is to say:—
(a) letters sent by a
private friend in his way, journey or travel, to be delivered by him to the
person to whom they are directed, without hire, reward or other profit or
advantage for receiving, carrying or delivering them;
(b) letters solely
concerning the affairs of the sender and delivered by his employee or a
messenger employed by him and the sender is not engaged in the business of
procuring or delivery of letters;
(c) documents issued by a
court or other authority entitled to issue the same, or any return or answers
to such documents sent, conveyed and delivered otherwise than by post;
(d) letters solely
concerning goods or property sent either by land, sea or air to be delivered
with the goods or property to which the letters concern, without hire, reward
or other profit or advantage for receiving, carrying or delivering them:
Provided that nothing in this
section shall authorise any person to make a collection of letters excepted as
aforesaid for the purpose of sending them otherwise than by post.”.
Registration
Further the amendments state that
-The Central Government may, grant registration on such terms and
conditions, as it thinks fit, to any person or body for carrying out any act
or performing any service falling under section 4, in
consideration of such fees as is set forth in the Second Schedule.
E-Payments
The amendments also enter the area of e-payment systems and state
-The
Central Government may provide for the remittance of money through the post
office by means of money order, postal order, telegraphic money order,
satellite money order (hereinafter referred to as the money order), or any
other instrument (hereinafter referred to as money transfer instrument) and
may make rules as to such money orders or money transfer instrument.
The desire of the Postal authorities to introduce
e-services is a welcome step. However, in view of the "Exclusive Privileges"
clause available for any Postal Services, in the absence of a special
waiver, the entry of Postal Authorities to either the E-Mail service or
E-payment service will automatically bring such services under the category of
"Exclusive Services Reserved for Postal Authorities".
The amendments may therefore make the Post Master General the super
licensing authority for any E-mail and Payment Gateway services.
Public will agree that this is a highly undesirable legislation.
naavi.org believes that the amendment is not intended to
bring monopoly in E-Mail services and we may even receive a clarification from
the Government in this regard. However the legislation in its present form can
be reasonably interpreted to uphold the exclusive privileges of the Indian
Postal Authorities and in some future date enable them to introduce a
"Transaction Fee" for every e-mails or every e-payments concluded by private
parties.
This legislation therefore cannot be trusted and must be
modified to state exclusively that
"Provisions contained in this enactment regarding electronic
post and electronic payments are only for the purpose of enabling the Indian
Postal authorities to deliver such services. Nothing contained in this Act or
in the rules that will be made here under will affect the E-Mails, E-Payments
and any Electronic services that are currently offered by and may be in future
offered by any person or firm, institution, or body corporate other than the Indian Postal Authorities."
I hope this aspect will be considered by the legislators
when the Bill comes for discussion in the Parliament.
It must be recognized that Postal authorities may not
always be able to provide their services at the least price and even today
many of the services of couriers are cheaper than Postal services. In this
context, the legislation creating a monopoly or even supervisory rights on e-
services will be against the consumer interests in India.
Public are requested to send their views to either
naavi.org.
Naavi
December 30, 2002
Courier Agencies see license raj to come back...FE article
Is There a Danger Lurking For E-Mail Users in India???
Copy
of the Amendment Bill
