Automated Compliance Checker for Legal Metrology Declarations on E-Commerce Platforms
Organization: Ministry of Consumer Affairs Food & Public Distribution (MoCA F&PD)
Category: Hardware | Theme: Miscellaneous

Background:
With the exponential growth of e-commerce in India and globally, the need to ensure accurate and legally compliant declarations on product listings has become more critical than ever. Under the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011, all pre-packaged goods sold online must clearly and accurately display information such as:
- Name and address of the manufacturer, packer/importer
- Net quantity in terms of standard units of weight, measures or number
- Retail sale price (MRP) inclusive of all taxes
- Consumer care details
- Date of manufacture/import
- Country of origin

Despite regulatory efforts, non-compliance on digital platforms remains widespread due to various reasons. To address this, the Department envisions a smart, scalable and automated solution that can verify declarations in real-time across various e-commerce websites.

Problem Description:
Develop an AI-powered automated compliance checker that can scan e-commerce platforms for product listings and validate them against mandatory Legal Metrology requirements. The system should:
- Extract text from product images using OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
- Crawl and scrape data from product listings in real time or batch mode
- Validate the information against a customizable rule engine built on Legal Metrology guidelines
- Flag non-compliance issues (e.g., missing MRP, incorrect unit, misleading quantity, absence of country of origin, etc.)
- Provide a dashboard/reporting tool for regulators to monitor violations and track compliance trends

Key Functional Requirements:
Data Acquisition:
- Web crawling APIs for major e-commerce platforms (Amazon, Flipkart, etc.)
- Image recognition to identify and crop relevant label regions

OCR & AI:
- Multi-language OCR support for label text extraction
- Use of computer vision to segment declarations on packaging

Rule Engine:
- Logical engine to validate each extracted field as per Packaged Commodities Rules
- Configurable for rule updates and regional variations

Dashboard:
- Visual dashboard for regulators showing:
  • Real-time compliance score
  • Trends by category, brand, or seller
  • Exportable violation reports
  • Geo-tagged compliance heatmaps (if applicable)

Scalability & Security:
- Cloud-based architecture for large-scale crawling
- Secure data logging and access control for regulators

Target Participants:
- Final year UG (B.Tech/B.E.) students in Electronics, Embedded Systems, Instrumentation, AI/ML, Cybersecurity
- PG/Ph.D. researchers in IoT Security, Metrology, Data Forensics
- Startups or academia-industry teams working on compliance technologies

Evaluation Criteria:
- Innovation (Use of novel AI/ML/NLP or scraping techniques)
- Accuracy (Precision in identifying compliant and non-compliant listings)
- Scalability (Performance on large product databases)
- User Experience (Ease of dashboard, actionable reports)
- Alignment with Legal Metrology Rules
- Regulatory Applicability (Can be deployed by Govt. departments with minimal changes)

Expected Deliverables:
(a) A working prototype of the compliance checker tool (Web-based or standalone app)
(b) Technical documentation including:
  • Data pipeline design
  • OCR and ML models used
  • Validation methodology
(c) Sample dataset with annotation (compliant/non-compliant examples)
(d) Dashboard demo with live/test crawl outputs
(e) Feasibility report for deployment with government bodies

Benefits and Impact:
- Saves time and effort in manual inspection of product declarations
- Promotes fair trade and protects consumers from deceptive practices
- Enables data-driven enforcement of Legal Metrology Act
- Prepares India for next-gen regulation of digital marketplaces

Mentorship and Resources:
- Legal Metrology Act and Rules/guidelines/advisories
- Access to curated datasets of product images and declarations
- Webinars by domain experts from the Ministry/Legal Metrology Division
- Access to sandbox e-commerce API for testing solutions

Future Prospects:
- Integration with a national regulatory enforcement portal
- Use as a plug-in for e-commerce portals for real-time seller feedback
- The scheme may be evaluated by the officers IILM, Ranchi, RRSLs and LM Hq, Delhi