Ban sale of Chinese Shein products on Amazon India: Delhi HC sends notice to centre

Shein ban: Shein app was banned in India last year alongside some of the popular Chinese apps including PUBG Mobile, TikTok, Camscanner, among others. Just like PUBG Mobile, Shein announced to be back to India and sell its products on Amazon starting Prime Day sale. The Delhi High Court has now issued notice to the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology seeking “ban, suspend, regulate” the sale of Shein products via Amazon India website.

As per ANI, the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) moved by Ananttika Singh sought “direction to the Union of India to appoint a third party committee at the cost of Amazon.in to make audits on the flow of data of the Indian consumers to Shein.” The Bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh reportedly refused to put any interim stay at the moment. The matter has been scheduled for August.

The petition filed through Advocates Preet Singh Oberoi and Amer Vaid also urged for a court direction to Amazon to partially suspend all partnership with Shein. The petition also stated that the e-commerce platform must assure the government of India that no user data will be shared in any form with Shein, which is a Chinese online shopping platform.

Earlier this month, Amazon announced that Shein products will be sold on the platform starting Prime Day sale. The Prime Day sale begins on July 26 for everyone and will continue until July 27. For Prime members, the sale will begin a day early on July 25 and these users will get early access to all deals available during the sale.

To recall, Shein Chinese online shopping app was banned in 2020 alongside PUBG Mobile and more. PUBG Mobile has been relaunched in India but as Battlegrounds Mobile India and is currently available only for Android users in the country. Alongside, ByteDance is also reportedly exploring opportunities to bring back the popular short video platform TikTok to the country but with a new name, TickTock.