The Indian legal system experienced a breakthrough with the introduction of the Consumer Protection Act in 1986 (the Act). While the main objective of the Act is to ensure adequate protection to the rights of the consumers, it also gained the reputation of being a better alternative to the time consuming and expensive litigation process in India. In order to make it easy for the average consumer to seek justice, the system of the consumer courts have been established in the most costeffective and consumer-friendly manner.
Not only individuals, but consumer organisations and NGOs and other collective consumer bodies are allowed to exercise the rights laid down by the Act. Over the last two decades, the consumer fora in the country have successfully dispensed justice to millions of consumers in various cases dealing with different subjects such as product liability, deficiency in services and medical negligence to name a few. With the recent development of consumer protection in the developed countries like UK, US and Canada, there is a high level of expectation from the Indian government to expand the scope of consumer laws in India. Anirudh Goswamii, in discussion with Hon’ble Justice Ashok Bhan, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India and the President, National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC), explore the existing and emerging challenges in the arena of consumer laws in India.
There is no ambiguity about this as section 2(d)(i) of the Act has clarified the position of a consumer: A consumer is a person who hires services of a service provider or buys goods, and on there being deficiency in service or defect in goods, can approach the consumer courts. Disputes related to goods or services used commercially are excluded from the consumer courts’ jurisdiction. However, if at all some clarifications are required, we have given the same in our judgments and even the Supreme Court has given clarifications about ‘consumer’ in their judgments.
The study regarding this is going on. However, we have to keep up with the society also. We cannot drastically change the Indian consumer laws for which the society is not yet ready. So envisaging any changes in the law will depend on how well we will be able to implement such changes. If we bring such laws that are not possible to implement currently, then there is no use of doing so. However, gradually, in the years to come, yes, we would need changes in the law and for that purpose, the study is going on.
Actually speaking, that particular judgment of the Supreme Court has not taken into consideration the earlier precedents where it has been said that if there is an alternate remedy available to the parties, they should resort to it. However, on this aspect, the department is thinking about bringing out a change in the present Act to take away the effect of that judgment.
We are amending the Act itself. After next year, I do not think that the concerned Supreme Court judgment will be any longer effective, keeping in mind the envisaged changes in the Act. The rest depends on the Supreme Court because the only point of concern is that if there is an alternate remedy, can consumers approach the consumer courts? Section 3 of the Act says that remedies under the Act are additional remedies. According to me, consumers should be able to approach the consumer courts, but we are bound by the judgment of the Supreme Court and we have to follow it, till the time the proposed amendment to the Act comes into function. As of now, disputes related to telecom companies may not be entertained by us. The Supreme Court’s decisions are, after all, considered to be the law of the land and need to be respected.
I have written to all the state Chief Ministers and to their respective governments to provide us with infrastructure. I can say that naturally, there seems to be some laxity in providing proper infrastructure. So far as the central government is concerned, they are providing us full support financially. We are also supplementing wherever we have extra funds for libraries, court rooms and for construction of buildings. For instance, in the ‘A’ class cities, we have increased the grant from Rs.75 lakh to Rs.2.5 crore, but despite the financial grant, some states have not given us land to construct buildings for the functioning of courts. So, even though there are sufficient financial funds in place, in some states, there is no land provided to us. Although, the central government is very supportive to our needs, we still need strong support from the state governments to take care of our infrastructural needs.
The private consumer awareness associations and NGOs do have a role to play, as they have been seen to promote consumer rights awareness. In my opinion, these NGOs can co-exist, since they also deal with helping consumers with grievances. In fact, we have allowed consumer associations and NGOs to not only support consumers in filing of cases, etc. but also in some cases, where the consumer cannot approach the consumer court himself; the NGOs are allowed to approach the consumer courts.
We have not yet made any laws in the present Act regarding this. It will be important in the near future to accommodate rights of travellers booking their tickets and accommodation via the Internet. I think there should definitely be some initiative in this regard. I will take a note of this issue while proposing amendments to the present Act to envisage such changes.
We have put up an objection to taking Unfair Trade Practices cases as of now. Unless the NCDRC is provided with a new bench and better infrastructure, which I have already asked for, it would not be possible to accommodate thousands of such cases that will come to us. We are looking into this matter and have moved an application to change the present law. We have proposed that the Unfair Trade Practices cases should also be directed to the Competition Commission of India.
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