E-Commerce Rules Amended to Strengthen Consumer Protection

The correct answer is 1 January 2027. The release says in its headline points, and repeats at the very end, that the new rules shall come into force from January 1, 2027, which gives e-commerce entities a clear runway before compliance becomes mandatory. The three wrong options are all dates that sound administratively plausible, and this is precisely the trap: a candidate who remembers only that the amendment was made in 2026 may assume it applies at once, and pick the October date. It is worth separating the two years cleanly in memory. The amending instrument is titled the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) (Amendment) Rules, 2026, because that is the year it was made, but the date of commencement falls in the following year. The rules it amends are the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, which were notified under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

The correct answer is 30 days. The amended rules provide that where a price reduction is announced, both the reduced price and the prior price shall be displayed, and they define the prior price as the lowest price at which the goods or services were offered during the thirty days preceding the announcement. The point of the provision is to stop the familiar trick of quietly raising a price and then advertising a discount from the inflated figure, because the reference point is now the lowest price in a fixed window rather than a figure of the seller choosing. The other options are periods that do not appear in the release. Candidates should tie this provision to the neighbouring ones in the same list, namely the ban on manipulating search results in a way that misleads users and the requirement that sponsored listings be identified through clear and prominent disclosures.

The correct answer is the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. The release states that the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 were notified under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and that they provide the framework for safeguarding consumers against unfair trade practices in the e-commerce sector; the amendment of 2026 strengthens that same framework. The other three statutes are real laws that a candidate may associate loosely with online business, but none of them is named in this release, and attributing the rules to them would be wrong. The chain worth memorising runs in one line: the Act of 2019 is the parent, the Rules of 2020 sit under it, the Amendment Rules of 2026 modify those rules, and the whole package takes effect from the first day of 2027. Also remember that the administering authority named here is the Department of Consumer Affairs.