Lockdown: What constitutes as essential for e-commerce delivery?

With the major spike in Covid-19 cases, many states have announced partial lockdowns and curfews. Maharashtra announced a 15-day curfew while Delhi announced a weekend curfew. Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab have also imposed restrictions to some extent. States like Maharashtra and Delhi have also restricted the movement of non-essential items through e-commerce websites during their respective curfew periods. According to various reports, Amazon had requested the Maharashtra government to allow delivery of all items as it is hard to list essentials.

Here is a broad outline of what will fall under the essential category when you are ordering online:

Maharashtra

The state has allowed the supply of essential goods and services through e-commerce, which includes:

1. Medical and health services including supporting manufacturing and distribution units. This would also include dealers, transport, and supply chain.
2. Manufacturing and distribution of vaccines, sanitizers, masks, medical equipment, their ancillaries, raw material units, and support services.
3. Veterinary services/animal care and pet food shops.
4. Groceries, vegetable shops, fruits, dairies, bakeries, confectioneries, all types of food.
5. Cold storage and warehousing services.
6. Agriculture-related activities and all allied activities required to ensure seamless continuity of the agricultural sector including the availability of farming input, seeds, fertilizers, equipment’s and their repairs.

This means only essential goods like food, groceries, personal care items, baby care products, pet care products, and some other categories of goods are allowed movement via e-commerce. Smartphones, electronics goods, large appliances, and other high-value and fast-moving items for the e-commerce industry are not categorised as essential goods.

Delhi

1. No restriction on inter-state and intra-state movement/transportation of essential/non-essential goods.
2. No separate permission / e-pass will be required for such movements.
3. Movement of persons related to commercial and private establishments providing the following essential services/commodities shall be allowed
4. Shops dealing or delivering food, groceries, fruits & vegetables, dairy & milk booths, meat & fish, animal fodder, pharmaceuticals, medicines, and medical equipment.
5. Delivery of all essential goods including food, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment through e-commerce.

Like last year, there still exists confusion on what constitutes an essential item, as it varies from household to household. The Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for supplying essential goods which were issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs in March 2020 during the initial complete lockdown phase had started to encourage home delivery of essential goods. The SOP identified essential goods as food, groceries, fruits, vegetables, dairy and milk products, meat and fish, animal fodder, seeds, and pesticides. It also stated to provide delivery of all essential goods, including food, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment through e-commerce.