Covid-19 lockdown: Amazon, Flipkart suspend non-essential deliveries in Delhi

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With the rising cases of coronavirus in the national capital, the Delhi government announced the lockdown in the state for one week, from April 19 to April 26 with the view to bring down the cases. Following the same, two major online shopping platforms, Amazon and Flipkart suspended their deliveries of non-essential items in Delhi.

However, both the online players are delivering essentials like food & grocery products, health products, personal care items, etc in the capital city as the Delhi government said, “there will be no restriction on inter-state and intra-state movement/transportation of essential goods. No separate permission/e-pass will be required for such movements.’’

Amazon India has put up a banner on its home page that says, “In light of the latest government guidelines, we are taking orders of essential products only. Deliveries may take longer than normal.”

However, Flipkart hasn’t put up any information or updates regarding the same for its customers. But it has carried a notice that says, “product availability may vary as per the government regulations for your zone.”

An Amazon India spokesperson said that it is enabling deliveries of essential products in line with new guidelines set by the government.

But further added, ”we have learned from customers over the last one year that urgent needs vary across households and it is challenging to define a static essentials list. Hence, we request the Delhi government to allow delivery and inter/intrastate movement of all products to enable people to maintain social distancing norms.”

He also said that E-commerce is the safest way to serve consumers’ needs while supporting livelihoods of lakhs of small and medium businesses including the local shops.

Following this, the trade body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) requested the Commerce Minister not to consider the requests raised by the e-commerce companies.

As a reaction to Amazon’s request, Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary-General of CAIT said, “fighting the Covid epidemic is not only the responsibility of the government but also the responsibility of every citizen and keeping this in mind, and we should try to restrict our non-essential trade activities as much as possible till the cases fall down.’’

Amazon and Flipkart initially suspended non-essential order deliveries in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and few others as these state governments have announced weekend curfews and lockdowns to fight the second wave of the pandemic.

However, Amazon and Flipkart are accepting orders of other goods as well but the delivery of the same will not be as prompt as it used to be before the lockdown. The online players would start delivering them after the upliftment of the 6-day lockdown.