Post officers can “intercept” any merchandise

The Bill goals to “consolidate and amend the law relating to Post Office in India,” which right this moment gives many companies past merely mail supply, the first concern of the Indian Post Office Act of 1898. The Post Office community right this moment has develop into a automobile for supply of various citizen-centric companies, which necessitated the repeal enactment of a brand new legislation, the Bill states.

Notably, Section 9 of the Bill permits the Centre to, by notification, empower any officer to “intercept, open or detain any item” within the curiosity of state safety, pleasant relations with international states, public order, emergency, public security, or contravention of different legal guidelines. This provision additionally permits submit officers at hand over postal gadgets to customs authorities if they’re suspected to include any prohibited merchandise, or if such gadgets are liable to obligation.

This is just like Sections 19, 25, and 26 of the 1898 Act. Section 19(1) disallowed individuals from sending by submit “any explosive, dangerous, filthy, noxious or deleterious substance, any sharp instrument not properly protected, or any living creature which is either noxious or likely to injure postal articles” or postal service officers in the middle of transmission.

Furthermore, the facility to intercept any prohibited or restricted articles throughout transmission by submit, or any postal article for public good throughout emergency or within the curiosity of public security is also exercised by the federal government and its officers underneath Sections 25 and 26 of the 1898 Act. The Law Commission in 1968, whereas analyzing the 1898 Act, noticed that the time period emergency is just not explicitly outlined, thereby permitting important discretion whereas intercepting items.

The Post Office exempt from legal responsibility

Besides this, Section 10 exempts the Post Office and its officer from “any liability by reason of any loss, mis-delivery, delay, or damage in course of any service provided by the Post Office,” besides such legal responsibility as could also be prescribed. The 1898 Act too exempted the federal government from legal responsibility for any lapses in postal service, besides the place such legal responsibility was undertaken expressly.

Moreover, the 2023 Bill removes all penalties and offences underneath the 1898 Act. For instance, offences dedicated by submit workplace officers reminiscent of misconduct, fraud, and theft, amongst others, have been deleted completely. At the identical time, if anybody refuses or neglects to pay the costs for availing a service supplied by the Post Office, such quantity shall be recoverable “as if it were an arrear of land revenue due” from them.

Removes Centre’s exclusivity

The current Bill has eliminated Section 4 of the 1898 Act, which allowed the Centre the unique privilege of conveying by submit, from one place to a different, all letters.

Effectively, this exclusivity was already misplaced by the Nineteen Eighties, with the rise of personal courier companies. Since neither the Post Office Act of 1898 nor the Indian Post Office Rules, 1933 had outlined the time period “letter” anyplace, courier companies bypassed the 1898 legislation by merely calling their couriers “documents” and “parcels”, reasonably than “letters.”.

The 2023 Bill, for the primary time, regulates non-public courier companies by bringing it underneath its ambit. While the federal government acknowledges its lack of exclusivity, it has additionally widened the ambit of the legislation as a way to intercept and detain any postal article, versus simply letters.

Opposition extremely crucial of the Bill

Several members of the Opposition have vociferously criticised the Bill, saying that regardless of promising to replace the Colonial legislation, it keeps the most draconian provisions that it contained.

“Over the past decade we have often seen this Government, in the guise of decolonising our minds and updating colonial era lore, bringing in legislation that is equally if not more arbitrary and unreasonable, and that more often than not encroaches upon the fundamental rights of countless Indians,” Congress MP Shashi Tharoor stated, opening the talk on the Bill.

“Even as it seeks to revise a colonial Bill, this Bill retains its draconian and colonial provisions, that too while eliminating the burden of accountability which a governmental enterprise like India Post ought constitutionally to shoulder. Sadly, it offers no new ideas to bring our post offices into the 21st Century,” he argued.