Critically evaluate the regulatory architecture for explosives in India, covering PESO, the Explosives Act 1884 and the Ammonium Nitrate Rules 2012, in the digital-commerce era.

India regulates explosives under a colonial-era law, the Explosives Act, 1884. The Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), under the Commerce Ministry, administers it [7]. The system works for physical supply chains but was built around licensed premises, not online storefronts. That gap showed in 2026, when the CCPA found 3,940 sellers listing explosives on e-commerce platforms [1].

Strengths

• Wide legal coverage: since 2011, ammonium nitrate (AN) mixtures with more than 45% AN by weight count as "explosives", with separate rules framed for them [3].
• Ammonium Nitrate Rules, 2012: PESO licenses the manufacture, storage, transport, import and export of AN [4].
• Safety–business balance: the NOC deadline was cut from 6 to 3 months, and AN imports must come in bags [5]. Mine owners no longer need an industrial licence to make ANFO for their own blasting [9].
• Digitisation: digital licensing and the System for Explosives Tracking & Tracing (SETT) make supplies easier to trace [6].

Weaknesses in the digital-commerce era

• Online blind spot: IndiaMART alone had 2,700 AN sellers, alongside listings for PETN and picric acid [1]. The licensing regime places no explicit duty on platforms.
• Enforcement borrowed from consumer law: CCPA had to treat the listings as misleading advertisements (Sec 2(28)) and unfair trade practices (Sec 2(47)) under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 [1]. It shared seller data with PESO [2], but no PESO follow-up has been reported [1].
• Self-declaration: platforms rely on documents that sellers upload. CCPA held this inadequate in its Snapdeal toys order [8].
• Weak deterrence: fines are a flat ₹10 lakh per order, and large platforms contest them through writs (IndiaMART in the Delhi High Court) [1].
• Unclear safe harbour: a marketplace's immunity under Sec 79 of the IT Act depends on general due diligence that is not specific to explosives [10].

Way forward

• Real-time checks of PESO licences against PESO's digital records, both at listing and at checkout.
• A notified list of regulated goods in the E-Commerce Rules that cannot be listed without a verified licence.
• Amend the 1884 Act to cover online offers for sale, and scale penalties to platform size.
• PESO should publish what action it took on the 3,940 sellers.

India's explosives regime is strong offline but only reactive online. Updating the 1884 Act, linking PESO's records to platforms and writing marketplace duties into law would move enforcement from case-by-case action to prevention. This would protect internal security while keeping lawful industrial users, such as mining, supplied.