Post Office Act, 2023 comes into force: Here is what it says

Here is all you need to know.

Post officers can “intercept” any item

The Act came in to “consolidate and amend the law relating to Post Office in India,” which today provides many services beyond simply mail delivery, the primary concern of the older Indian Post Office Act of 1898. The Post Office network today has become a vehicle for delivery of different citizen-centric services, which necessitated the repeal enactment of a new law, the Act states.

Notably, Section 9 of the Act allows the Centre to, by notification, empower any officer to “intercept, open or detain any item” in the interest of state security, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, emergency, public safety, or contravention of other laws. This provision also allows post officers to hand over postal items to customs authorities if they are suspected to contain any prohibited item, or if such items are liable to duty.

This is similar to Sections 19, 25, and 26 of the 1898 Act. Section 19(1) disallowed persons from sending by post “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 course of transmission.

Furthermore, the power to intercept any prohibited or restricted articles during transmission by post, or any postal article for public good during emergency or in the interest of public safety could also be exercised by the government and its officials under Sections 25 and 26 of the 1898 Act. The Law Commission in 1968, while examining the 1898 Act, observed that the term emergency is not explicitly defined, thereby allowing significant discretion while intercepting goods.

The Post Office exempt from liability

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,” except such liability as may be prescribed. The 1898 Act too exempted the government from liability for any lapses in postal service, except where such liability was undertaken expressly.

Moreover, the Act removes all penalties and offences under the 1898 Act. For example, offences committed by post office officials such as misconduct, fraud, and theft, among others, have been deleted entirely. At the same time, if anyone refuses or neglects to pay the charges for availing a service provided by the Post Office, such amount shall be recoverable “as if it were an arrear of land revenue due” from them.

Removes Centre’s exclusivity

The Act has removed Section 4 of the 1898 Act, which allowed the Centre the exclusive privilege of conveying by post, from one place to another, all letters.

Effectively, this exclusivity was already lost by the 1980s, with the rise of private courier services. Since neither the Post Office Act of 1898 nor the Indian Post Office Rules, 1933 had defined the term “letter” anywhere, courier services bypassed the 1898 law by simply calling their couriers “documents” and “parcels”, rather than “letters.”

The Act, for the first time, regulates private courier services by bringing it under its ambit. While the government acknowledges its lack of exclusivity, it has also widened the ambit of the law in order to intercept and detain any postal article, as opposed to just letters.

Opposition highly critical of the Bill

Several members of the Opposition had vociferously criticised the Bill when it was in Parliament, saying that despite promising to update the Colonial law, 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 said, opening the debate on the Bill in the Rajya Sabha.

“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.

This is an updated version of an explainer published last December.