(1)

Any person (other than individual), having a permanent account number allotted under the Income-tax Act, 1961 (43 of 1961) or such other document as may be notified by the Central Government or any farmer producer organisation or agricultural co-operative society may establish and operate an electronic trading and transaction platform for facilitating inter-State or intra-State trade and commerce of scheduled farmers' produce in a trade area:

Provided that the person establishing and operating an electronic trading and transaction platform shall prepare and implement the guidelines for fair trade practices such as mode of trading, fees, technical parameters including inter-operability with other platforms, logistics arrangements, quality assessment, timely payment, dissemination of guidelines in local language of the place of operation of the platform and such other matters.

(2)

If the Central Government is of the opinion that it is necessary and expedient in public interest so to do, it may, for electronic trading platforms, by rules-

(a) specify the procedure, norms, manner of registration; and

(b) specify the code of conduct, technical parameters including inter-operability with other platform and modalities of trade transaction including logistics arrangements and quality assessment of scheduled farmers' produce and mode of payment,