Everyone reading this uses – or at least has used – the postal service. Mailing letters, sending parcels, greeting the neighbourhood postman (and tipping him on Onam or Diwali) is part of everyone’s life. But with the advent of email, mobile telephony and courier services, the Post Office has largely fallen out of favour. It is one part of the government -- still governed by an Act passed by the British in 1898 -- that has long been overdue for reform and change to bring it into the 21st century.
This our government attempted to do during the recently-concluded fiasco of the winter session of Parliament, through the Post Office Bill, 2023. I was the sole voice from the opposition in the Lok Sabha who got the opportunity to speak on this Bill, on the very day the security breach took place in Parliament. Over the past decade, we have often seen our rulers, in the guise of “decolonizing our minds” and “repealing colonial-era laws,” bringing in legislation that is equally, if not more, arbitrary and unreasonable. And so was the case with this Bill.
The Government claimed it wished to reinvigorate the Indian Postal Service by widening the range of services it renders, to make it more useful to the Indian populace. But there was little evidence of that in the Bill. Instead what was visible was that it now grants itself sweeping powers to infringe upon the citizens’ right to freedom of speech and expression, and their right to privacy, which the Supreme Court has recognized as being a vital part of the right to life and liberty enshrined in Article 21. The Government assumes these powers through Section 9 of the Bill, which entitles it, using merely a notification, to allow officers to intercept, open, or confiscate items transmitted by the Post Office. The grounds on which they can do this include “security of the state, friendly relations, public order, emergency, or public safety” -- awfully vague grounds that can be construed to cover anything that the Government doesn’t like.
The second clause of Section 9 allows India Post to dispose of any items that has fallen foul of their ambiguous definition of what constitutes a “threat” to India’s interests. This is despite the 1996 Supreme Court judgement which ruled that a just and fair procedure must exist to regulate the power of interception, because in its absence it is not possible to safeguard the fundamental rights of citizens under Article 19(1)(a) and Article 21. The Supreme Court also established various safeguards for interception, but under the Bill a simple notification is enough for officials to act.
Ironically, the 1898 Act, which the Postal Bill, 2023 replaces, was less arbitrary. Though it allowed interception, it specified the circumstances under which it could be carried out, which this Bill does not. The Law Commission in its 38th Report had already found the term “emergency” (used in both versions of the Act) not explicitly defined, and feared it provided excessively wide grounds for interception. It further added that a public emergency cannot be a constitutionally permissible ground for interception if it does not impinge on the security of the state or public order or other elements specified in the Constitution. One would have expected an updated law to take this into account. But Section 9 of the Post Office Bill, 2023 not only grants the Government Orwellian powers to intrude into our lives, it fails to provide any right to the concerned citizen to be informed of their correspondence or consignment having been intercepted. Indians, beware: you cannot contest India Post’s decision to intercept, detain or destroy your correspondence or parcels.
The Bill’s lack of any grievance redressal mechanism for encroachments upon the fundamental rights of Indian citizens is compounded by Section 10, which exempts postal officials from liability for loss, delay or mis-delivery. What an irony it is that today, private courier services in our country are far more accountable under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 to the people of India than the Indian Postal Service, an undertaking of our own Government. Under the 2003 Bill, if a consignment disappears you have to prove that the officials concerned acted wilfully or with a fraudulent intent before you can receive compensation, an almost impossible undertaking. So ordinary Indians have absolutely no avenue to hold the postal service liable and the Indian Postal Service officers — who are, of course, public servants — are absolved of any accountability to the citizens. Welcome to New India.
The Indian Post Office Act of 1898 was far more accountable to the Indian people: for instance, the illegal opening of postal articles by a postal officer was punishable with imprisonment up to two years, a fine, or both. In stark contrast, under the 2023 Bill, there are no repercussions for flagrant violations of our right to privacy. So, first Jan Vishwas watered down the offences and penalties that an officer of India Post was subject to under the 1898 Act; and now this Bill, by dispensing with these offences and penalties, makes officers of India Post — and, in extension, our Government — wholly unanswerable to the Indian citizen.
The Government claims that it is introducing this Bill to transform the Post Office into a “vehicle for delivery of a variety of citizen-centric services.” This admirable aspiration is crucial for the reinvigoration of India Post in an intensely interconnected and dizzyingly digitized world. However, nowhere in the Bill does the Government spell out how exactly it intends to do this. Instead, we are being asked to take it on trust that, after this Bill is passed into law, the Government will wave a magic wand of rules and regulations that will catapult our postal services to bedazzling new heights. Leaving such key details to rules drafted by bureaucrats is worrying, especially given the authoritarian elements already in the Bill. Moreover, given that India Post is planning to add an array of financial services and products to its portfolio, it’s imperative, especially where citizens’ sensitive data is involved, that the government proceed with the utmost caution, protecting postal consumers from fraud, data breaches and kindred transgressions. No such assurance is given in the Bill.
Indeed, at a time when post offices around the world are taking initiatives to expand the offerings of their postal services, this Bill lacks imagination. That our government, in an age of “Digital India”, should fail to lay down the groundwork for a reinvigoration is disappointing. If it envisages India Post as rendering e-commerce, e-government and e-finance services, then the Government ought to move towards its rapid digitization — and diversification. This could involve introducing an encrypted, digital postbox service — sort of like an India Post email service, which will save Indians quite a lot of money in postage costs. Through this service, citizens could view, manage and organise their digital communications from numerous providers in a single location; receive and respond to several transactional communications and securely manage, by linking it to their UPI, other necessary affairs such as booking railway, bus and air tickets; paying for governmental services — LPG, electricity, water, and so on — alongside paying for OTT subscription. But there’s nothing like this in the Bill.
All there is, then, is a law that adds to the powers of government officials, absolves them of any accountability, and offers precious little in exchange to the citizens. Which begs the question: can we trust the Post Office anymore? Indeed, can we trust the government?
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01.01.2024
Everyone reading this uses – or at least has used – the postal service. Mailing letters, sending parcels, greeting the neighbourhood postman (and tipping him on Onam or Diwali) is part of everyone’s life. But with the advent of email, mobile telephony and courier services, the Post Office has largely fallen out of favour. It is one part of the government -- still governed by an Act passed by the British in 1898 -- that has long been overdue for reform and change to bring it into the 21st century.
This our government attempted to do during the recently-concluded fiasco of the winter session of Parliament, through the Post Office Bill, 2023. I was the sole voice from the opposition in the Lok Sabha who got the opportunity to speak on this Bill, on the very day the security breach took place in Parliament. Over the past decade, we have often seen our rulers, in the guise of “decolonizing our minds” and “repealing colonial-era laws,” bringing in legislation that is equally, if not more, arbitrary and unreasonable. And so was the case with this Bill.
The Government claimed it wished to reinvigorate the Indian Postal Service by widening the range of services it renders, to make it more useful to the Indian populace. But there was little evidence of that in the Bill. Instead what was visible was that it now grants itself sweeping powers to infringe upon the citizens’ right to freedom of speech and expression, and their right to privacy, which the Supreme Court has recognized as being a vital part of the right to life and liberty enshrined in Article 21. The Government assumes these powers through Section 9 of the Bill, which entitles it, using merely a notification, to allow officers to intercept, open, or confiscate items transmitted by the Post Office. The grounds on which they can do this include “security of the state, friendly relations, public order, emergency, or public safety” -- awfully vague grounds that can be construed to cover anything that the Government doesn’t like.
The second clause of........
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