Software System to check compliance of Packaged Commodities under Legal Metrology(Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011 by scanning products, images and labels.
“Retail products sold across India must display specific legal information like MRP, manufacturing date, and packer details in precise formats. Because checking millions of packages manually is impossible, inspectors need a smart software tool to scan labels and instantly detect missing or illegal labels. This project builds that automated scanning and compliance system.”
Deconstructed Problem Blueprint
WHAT TO BUILD?
A hybrid web and mobile application featuring computer vision and OCR pipelines designed to automatically detect, extract, and validate mandatory consumer declarations on packaged commodities against the Legal Metrology Rules, 2011.
WHO IS IT FOR?
The primary user is the Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) and state-level Legal Metrology enforcement officers, while the beneficiaries include retail consumers and compliant manufacturers.
WHY DOES IT EXIST?
Manual inspection of millions of SKU packages in warehouses, retail stores, and e-commerce listings is humanly impossible, allowing non-compliant, misleading, or counterfeit packaging to slip through and cheat consumers.
INPUT → PROCESS → OUTPUT ARCHITECTURE PIPELINE
Images of product labels captured via smartphone camera, uploaded package image files, or web-scraper payloads from e-commerce product listings.
Image preprocessing (dewewing, contrast enhancement), object detection for text regions, OCR text extraction, layout segmentation, and rule-based NLP validation engine checking against Legal Metrology Rules (font sizes, mandatory fields, net quantity units).
An automated compliance dashboard, detailed digital violation reports in PDF format, flagged non-compliance metrics, and a secure searchable repository of past inspections.
CONSTRAINTS
- Must handle curved surfaces, shiny/reflective plastic packaging, and multi-lingual text labels.
- Must accurately compute pixel-to-millimeter ratios to verify mandatory minimum font size requirements under legal rules.
- Must support offline-first mobile operations for ground inspectors working in remote warehouses with zero cellular connectivity.
JURY METRICS
- OCR Extraction Accuracy (Precision & Recall for numeric fields like MRP and Net Quantity).
- Font-size compliance calculation error rate (< 2% variance from manual physical measurements).
- End-to-end processing latency per product image (< 5 seconds on standard mobile hardware).
- UI/UX intuitive flow for non-technical field inspectors.
CORE BOTTLENECK
Accurately measuring physical font sizes (in millimeters/points) from 2D images captured under varying camera angles, lighting conditions, and curved packaging geometries.
Why You Should Choose This PS (Pros)
- Extremely high national governance and consumer protection impact.
- Clear, well-defined rulebook (Legal Metrology Rules 2011) makes rule-engine logic construction straightforward.
- Great visual demo potential with real-time bounding boxes and instant red/green compliance badges.
Challenges & Risks to Watch (Cons)
- Handling shiny, metallic, or glossy packaging materials causes glare and compromises standard OCR pipelines.
- Font size verification requires camera calibration or reference objects to translate pixel heights into real-world units.
Recommended Tech Stack & Grand Finale Features
Killer Features to Impress the SIH Jury
View Official SIH 2026 Portal Raw Text▼
Packaged commodities are widely sold through retail stores, supermarkets and e-commerce platforms across India. Under the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 and the Legal Metrology(Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011, every packaged commodity is required to bear mandatory declarations such as name and address of manufacturer/packer/importer, net quantity, Maximum Retail Price (MRP), month and year of manufacture/packing/import,consumer care details and other prescribed declarations in a specified format and manner.These declarations are important for ensuring transparency, fair trade practices and consumer protection. However, due to the large volume and variety of packaged products available in the market, manual inspection and compliance checking by enforcement agencies becomes time-consuming and resource intensive. Non-compliance such as missing declarations, incorrect font sizes, improper MRP declarations and other such practices are frequently observed.There is scope to develop a compliance checking system capable of scanning product labels,package images and product listings to identify violations under the Legal Metrology(Packaged Commodities) Rules,
Develop a software application capable of scanning packaged commodity labels, product images and product information to automatically assess compliance with the Legal Metrology(Packaged Commodities) Rules,
2011.
The system should be capable of:
The proposed solution should include:
Rules,
2011.
Key Functional Requirements: