On 23rd February, 2019, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (“the DPIIT”) released the Draft National E-Commerce Policy (“the Draft Policy”) with the objective to help stakeholders fully benefit from opportunities arising from the progressive digitization of the domestic digital economy and establish a level playing field for all stakeholders in the digital economy.

Though, titled as the ‘National E-Commerce Policy’ the document addresses a wide range of subjects, such as data protection and ownership, cross-border data flow, foreign investment, tax, competition issues, intellectual property and intermediary liability, among other things. These issues affect a number of stakeholders and industries in addition to e-commerce websites and their consumers.

Our comments, inter alia, address issues with the Draft Policy like - jurisdiction of the DPIIT, data ownership and sovereignty, data localisation, intermediary liability and law enforcement access to data. Our detailed comments are as follows: