Offences Relating to Weights and Measures

The Legal Metrology Act, 2009, with the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011 and the other rules under the Act, enforced through the State Legal Metrology Department under the Controller of Legal Metrology. The Department of Consumer Affairs administers the Act at the centre.

No. Sections 264 to 267 of the Indian Penal Code, which dealt with fraudulent use of false instruments for weighing, false weights and measures and their manufacture or sale, were not carried forward into the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. The Legal Metrology Act is now the operative framework.

The BNS can apply where the facts independently disclose a different offence — cheating, forgery, use of a forged record, or criminal breach of trust. What has gone is the standalone weights-and-measures offence. A routine metrology lapse is a metrology matter, and reading criminal intent into it is usually a mistake in either direction.

A mechanism introduced into the Legal Metrology Act by the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2026, which inserted a definition of "improvement notice" in Section 2. A Legal Metrology Officer may issue one for a specified first-time procedural or regulatory contravention, giving the business a reasonable opportunity to rectify the deficiency instead of proceeding straight to penal action.

The Department of Consumer Affairs notified the relevant Legal Metrology provisions by S.O. 2103(E) dated 27 April 2026, with effect from 1 May 2026.

A specified list of first-time procedural and regulatory contraventions — broadly use and sale of non-standard weights or measures, model approval, documentation and returns, import and registration requirements, non-standard packaged commodities, and furnishing of statutory information. It operates on the sections dealing with those matters rather than across the whole Act.

Repeated contraventions, fraud, tampering, and conduct that harms consumer interests. It is a mechanism for genuine procedural lapses, not a general amnesty, and arguing for it where the facts show tampering wastes the one opportunity that was available.

Penal proceedings and the litigation that follows may be avoided. That is the entire point of the mechanism — and it is why the reply to a notice should be drafted with the improvement route in mind from the outset rather than after a penalty has been proposed.

Failure to comply, and repeated non-compliance, continue to attract penal action under the relevant provisions. The improvement notice is an opportunity; it does not extinguish the underlying contravention.

It restructured them. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 replaced imprisonment with monetary penalty for a number of the procedural provisions, while raising the amounts substantially and introducing escalation for second and subsequent contraventions. The direction of travel is less imprisonment and more money, with repeat conduct treated far more seriously.

No, and this is worth being careful about. The amounts in the pre-amendment text of the Act are no longer the operative figures for the amended provisions, and the amendments were notified in stages. Confirm the figure for the specific section as it stands at the relevant date rather than working from an older copy of the Act.

Yes. Section 24 requires a weight or measure intended for use in a transaction or for protection to be verified and stamped before use, with fees paid at the prescribed time and place. An instrument in use on an expired verification is a live contravention, and it is the easiest thing in the world for an inspector to establish.

Section 23 prohibits manufacture, repair or sale of a weight or measure without a licence from the Controller. A user of an instrument is in a different position from a person who manufactures, repairs or deals in them.

Non-compliance with the mandatory declarations on a pre-packaged commodity — net quantity, retail sale price, the name and address of the manufacturer, packer or importer, the date of manufacture, packing or import, consumer care details, and the correct unit and symbol. Section 36 deals with non-standard packages, including shortfall in the declared net quantity.

Yes. The mandatory declarations have to be visible on the digital listing itself, not only on the physical package. A listing that omits the net quantity, the importer details or the consumer care information can be the subject of a notice against the seller, and in some situations the platform.

Commonly, yes. Imported pre-packaged commodities must carry the importer declarations, and an importer of weights or measures has a separate registration requirement under Section 38. Relabelling after import must still produce a compliant declaration.

A statutory settlement under Section 48 by which specified offences may be compounded on payment, before or after prosecution is instituted, by the Director or the Controller within the prescribed limits. It closes the matter without a trial.

Not reflexively. Compounding is quick, but it creates a record, and Section 48 bars compounding a similar offence within three years of a previous compounded offence. A business that compounds a label defect this year can find the same defect next year is not compoundable at all. Assess the repeat exposure before paying.

Yes. Section 50 provides an appeal against a decision or order, to the Director or the Central Government, or to the State Government, depending on the officer who passed it. The appeal must be filed within sixty days, extendable where sufficient cause for the delay is shown. The appellate authority may confirm, modify or set aside the order, or direct fresh proceedings.

Section 49 makes the person in charge of and responsible to the company for the conduct of its business liable along with the company, subject to the usual defences of lack of knowledge and due diligence. The Act also allows a company to nominate a director to be responsible for compliance, and the court may order publication of the name and place of business of a convicted company at its expense.

It is worth getting right, because it determines who is answerable. The nomination has to be made properly, with the nominee’s consent and the prescribed intimation, and it has to reflect someone who actually has charge of the function. A nomination on paper that does not match the reality tends not to survive examination.

They can be. Where a seizure occurs the seizure memo is the key document — what was taken, on what basis, in whose presence. Release and the defence on merits are different exercises, and the memo governs both.

Within the period stated in the notice. Treat it as short. Where the contravention is curable, the value of a reply drops sharply once the correction could have been made and was not — particularly now that the improvement route exists.

Yes, and they are frequently the whole case in an e-commerce matter. Electronic records are governed by Sections 61 to 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, so preserve your own complete listing history, including the version as it stood on the date alleged.

A casual reply that admits the facts in general terms without identifying the precise contravention alleged, without correcting what is curable, and without engaging with the improvement notice route. That reply converts a rectifiable lapse into an admitted offence.

We handle notice review, reply drafting, compliance correction, documentation, compounding assessment, appeal strategy and advocate briefing. Appearance before a court is through enrolled advocates.