Department of Posts (DoP) has been the backbone of the country’s communication and has played a crucial role in the country’s social economic development. It touches the lives of Indian citizens in many ways: delivering mails, accepting deposits under Small Savings Schemes, providing life insurance cover under Postal Life Insurance (PLI) and Rural Postal Life Insurance (RPLI) and providing citizen centric services, etc.

            The Department of Posts has undertaken legislative reform after a period of 125 years and framed a new legislation – “Post Office Act, 2023” on 24.12.2023. The said Act has come into effect from 18.06.24.

            To furtherance this initiative, new set of subordinate legislations under the Post Office Act, 2023 i.e. the Post Office Rules, 2024 and the Post Office Regulations,2024 has also been framed. The Government of India has notified said subordinate legislations through official gazette and they came into force w.e.f. 16.12.2024.

            The subordinate legislations has been framed with the motto of “ Dak Sewa Jan Sewa” and aims to create a subordinate legislation with simplified, easily understandable language with the vision of “Maximum Governance and Minimum Government” and “Atmanirbhar Bharat”. The new Rules and Regulations contains 19 rules and 180 regulations in numbers.

           The Post Office Rules, 2024 are framed to be enabler for the services to be provided by the post offices. It envisages for opening new avenues of the Department and generation of employment through services which can be offered through the Post Office, by utilizing the vast postal network to provide access for delivery of citizen centric services, even in the distant and remote parts of the country through collaborations with public and private entities.

           The Rules are simple and concise, opens up scope for introducing new products for ease of living. The Rules also have futuristic aspects of address identifiers (digital address) and Digital mode - payment of postage or other charges. It further recognizes the sovereign function regarding issue of postage stamps including stamps in digital form and enabling provision for grievance redressal. These Rules do not contain penal provision.

           The Post Office Regulations, 2024 contains the details and operational aspects of products and services offered by the post office across the country.  The major features of the new Regulations are as under:

1. The Regulations also contains enabling provisions for Insurance and Financial Services offered through the post office network.

b)  The mails product offered under the Universal Postal Service- products which are affordable and made available to all users, within and outside the country; are mentioned.

c)  The Mails and Parcel products are rationalised keeping in view the redundancy of the existing products and optimizing operational efficiency with a vision of having one product for one need, promote ease of working amongst staff and easy understanding amongst the citizens. The features of all the existing products have been subsumed into one umbrella product of each type. eg. Instead of going through subjective classification of various products under book packets at different rate slabs, book packet, pattern & sample packet and book packets containing printed books have been subsumed in one product i.e. Book Post etc.

d)  The limit of amount of remittance through money order has been raised from Rs 5,000/- to Rs. 10,000/- to cater the disbursement of various social welfare schemes.

e)   The registration facility has been extended to other products eg. people going on tourist places can share their memories in shape of pictorial post cards with assured delivery with track and trace facility etc.

f)    The provision related with registered newspaper has been made in sync with the provisions of the new Press and Registration of Periodicals Act, 2023. The existing postal registration granted in accordance with the provisions of erstwhile India Post Office Act, 1898, Indian Post Office Rules, 1933 and relevant instructions on the subject, may continue to prevail till its renewal. However, the provisions of the new sub-ordinate legislations are applicable to fresh postal registration and subsequent renewal of newspaper.

g) The parcel has been made compulsorily accountable with track and trace features to promote ease of doing business for small businesses and micro small and medium enterprises.  

h)  The provision of utilising the post office network for providing services of public & private entities through agreement, has also been made.

            The Rules and Regulations are issued as an initiative to introduce a paradigm shift from the traditional approach of providing mails services to delivery of citizen centric services, and would create a more conducive environment for ensuring ease of doing business. The enactment of the new subordinate legislations also testifies the Government’s efforts to remove obsolete and archaic aspects from the existing one.

For detailed information, the publishers and other stakeholders are advised to carefully go through the provisions of the -
- Post Office Rules, 2024 https://www.indiapost.gov.in/VAS/Pages/News/IP_19122024_Rules.pdf  
- Post Office Regulations, 2024 https://www.indiapost.gov.in/VAS/DOP_PDFFiles/IP_19122024_Regulations.pdf

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