The Ministry of Home Affairs on Friday extended India’s ongoing coronavirus lockdown by another two weeks after May 4. The announcement was accompanied by a new set of guidelines, based on demarcation of the country into “specific” zones reflecting the risk potential. As opposed to the last extension, the Government is allowing “significant” relaxations in terms of the activities which will be permitted during India’s Coronavirus lockdown 3.0, but conditions will apply. This includes lifting the ban on e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart and others to resume the sales of non-essential goods including smartphones, laptops and PCs.
This means e-commerce platforms can start selling — and delivering — non-essential goods like smartphones, laptops and PCs, starting from May 4. The sales, or rather deliveries, will be only permitted in orange and green zones of the country. Green zones are essentially areas with either zero cases or no confirmed COVID-19 cases in the last 21 days while orange zones are those where the number is in-between zero or no confirmed cases and being at “significant risk of spread of the infection,” aka the red zones. E-commerce platforms are not allowed to resume sales and deliver non-essentials in the red zones until further notice.
It must be noted that this is not the first time the Government has given a go-ahead to e-commerce platforms to resume full operations. The Government had announced that it would ease the restrictions on e-commerce websites, allowing them to operate, from April 20, previously, only to take a U-turn later. Though this time, it is out with a more comprehensive roadmap for e-commerce websites, so there’s a little more clarity on how they can resume activity.
Top smartphone brands like Xiaomi, Samsung and Vivo had already started taking “prepaid” orders for smartphones silently via their respective e-commerce websites, possibly in anticipation of the announcement. Though, there was no word on deliveries. All this should change now, as all these brands can now start shipping their products and start deliveries soon.
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