National E-commerce Policy: India

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, acting through the Department of Consumer Affairs, has notified the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026, vide Notification No. CG-DL-E-10092026-276125, published in the Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part II, Section 3, Sub-section (i), dated 9 September 2026.

On September 9, 2026, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution (Department of Consumer Affairs) notified the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026 (“Amendment Rules”), amending the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 (“E-Commerce Rules”). The Amendment Rules will come into force on January 1, 2027.

The visual interface of ecommerce platforms increasingly influences how consumers select, purchase, subscribe to and cancel goods and services. Before the issuance of a framework specifically addressing dark patterns, the Consumer Protection Act 2019 (“Consumer Protection Act”) and the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules 2020 (“E-Commerce Rules”) already prohibited unfair trade practices in e-commerce.

The Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Amendment Rules, 2026 introduce significant compliance obligations for e-commerce platforms, particularly regarding the disclosure of Country of Origin and other product information. This article analyses the key amendments, their implications for manufacturers, importers, and online marketplaces, and the broader objectives of strengthening consumer protection in the digital marketplace.

India's food safety regulator has introduced new labelling amendments that simplify compliance for infant nutrition products and small packages while strengthening traceability requirements for non-retail containers. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is pushing for front-of-pack warning labels on products high in fat, sugar, and salt, raising critical questions about implementation thresholds, consumer accessibility, and the balance between public health and industry concerns.

India's Supreme Court is examining the food regulator's proposed front-of-pack labelling framework for packaged foods, which would require red hexagonal warnings on products exceeding specified levels of sugar, salt and fat. The Court has raised critical questions about nutrient thresholds, label design, implementation timelines and practical implications for food businesses, while the final requirements remain subject to judicial determination and subsequent regulatory process.

On 9 September 2026, the Department of Consumer Affairs, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, notified the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026 (2026 Amendment), amending the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules 2020 (E-Commerce Rules).

The Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, has amended the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 through the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026, with the objective of strengthening consumer protection while facilitating a transparent and balanced regulatory framework for the e-commerce sector.

For most of the last decade, e-commerce compliance in India has been a question of what a platform says: the disclosures on a product page, the terms in a policy, the identity of a seller. The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026 change the question. They reach into how a platform is built and how it behaves, its ranking logic, its discount displays, its interface design and its use of consumer data, and make those matters of compliance rather than of commercial discretion. Notified on 9 September 2026 and effective from 1 January 2027, the amendments give businesses a defined, and short, runway to adapt.

The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 (the Act) received the President's assent on 9 August 2019 which has replaced the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

On June 3, 2026, the Supreme Court of India’s AI Committee released preliminary draft of the Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Courts, 2026 (“The Draft”). This marks a shift from scattered experiments with AI tools for translation, transcription, research and case management. With over 93,000 pending matters as of March 2026, the guidelines aim to ease processes for officials and citizens. AI could help reduce backlogs through automated cause-list preparation, transcription, research, and defect scrutiny, but its use also raises serious concerns.

When an artificial intelligence system is trained on copyrighted news content, and later answers a user’s question using what it learned, has the law been broken? On 24th July 2026, the Delhi High Court answered that question, at least for now. In ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. Open AI OpCo LLC, Justice Amit Bansal declined to grant an interim injunction against OpenAI, holding, on a prima facie, interim stage view, that the company’s use of ANI’s news content to train its large language models (“LLMs”) falls within the fair dealing exception under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957

A gift deed is a legal document that facilitates the voluntary transfer of property from one person (the donor) to another (the donee) without any exchange of money or consideration.

The Hon'ble Supreme Court held that, the following twin test needs to be satisfied for an establishment to seek exemption from Section 16 (1) of the Act.

The change is effected through two instruments: the Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Amendment Regulations, 2026, notified via gazette on 10th March, 2026[1] (the “Amendment Regulations”), and a subsequent implementation order dated 13th March, 2026[2] (the “Order”) issued by FSSAI directing all licensing authorities to apply the revised thresholds with effect from 1st April, 2026.

Cybersecurity regulation in India has, until now, largely spoken to the entity that suffers the breach. The 2022 CERT-In Directions issued under Section 70B of the Information Technology Act, 2000 fixed a six-hour reporting clock on the organisation that detects an incident. The new Guidelines flip the lens onto the entity upstream of that breach, the OEM or technology provider that built the product in the first place. For the first time, vendors supplying software, firmware, cloud platforms, or APIs into India carry direct, time-bound, and independently verifiable obligations of their own and not obligations that are merely passed through a customer contract, but obligations CERT-In itself may enforce.

In mid-September 2026, government sources said Meta Platforms’ Indian operations, Facebook, Instagram and Threads, should no longer be viewed merely as an “internet intermediary” but should also be treated as a “service provider,” arguing that the company’s monetised algorithms actively decide what content gets amplified, distributed and shown to whom. That is a government position, not a new statutory classification, and this article returns to that distinction below.

On February 10, 2026, the Central Government notified the amended Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026 (hereinafter referred to as “IT Amendment Rules”), marking a significant shift in how India regulates Artificial Intelligence (AI) and synthetically generated content online.

India’s new labour code framework, comprising four consolidated codes enacted between 2019 and 2020, represents the most comprehensive overhaul of employment laws since independence. Among these, the Code on Wages, 2019 (hereinafter referred to as the “Code”) amalgamates the Payment of Wages Act, 1936; the Minimum Wages Act, 1948; the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965; and the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, into a single, unified enactment.

Section 3 clause (2) sub-clause (a) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Developtment) Act, 2016 states that all the real estate projects are required to be registered under the Act...