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It was a one-day conference of those who administer consumer justice in the country. An annual event in Delhi, it is attended by those who head consumer courts at the state level and the secretaries who handle consumer affairs in the states. It is called by the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission to mark its birth anniversary on August 17. The agenda is predictable. The Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs wants to know why states have not filled up vacancies that exist in consumer courts; why the states have not utilised the grant given for providing infrastructure; why they have not created additional Benches to provide for the increasing number of complaints being filed. And the secretaries give some explanation. And then the Chairman of the National Commission (a retired judge of the Supreme Court) urges the presidents of the state commissions, who are mostly retired judges of the high court, to speed up the process of adjudication and simplify them They in turn tell him how their salaries are low and they are working 10 to 12 hours without even a stenographer. But this time, officials of the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs took everyone by surprise with their brutal frankness. Saying that consumers were angry about the way the consumer courts were functioning and sending the ministry "hate-mail", the officials presented some startling facts to underscore this point. For example, Sub-Section 3 A of the Consumer Protection Act says that every endeavour shall be made to decide the complaint within a period of three months from the date of receipt of notice by the opposite party and within five months where the product in dispute requires analysis or testing. This amendment came into force on March 15, 2003.Two years hence the record of consumer courts in enforcing this provision is shockingly poor. The Haryana State Commission, it seems, has the worst record among all states and union territories. Only a small 4 per cent of the cases were decided within the stipulated time. Its neighbour, Punjab has done only marginally better it decided 9 per cent of the cases within the time norms prescribed under the law. Surprisingly, the new state of Uttaranchal has done considerably better 40 per cent of the cases filed before it were decided within the time norms. While Delhi stuck to the time limit in only 19 per cent of the cases, West Bengal in 20 per cent. Among the District forums, Andhra Pradesh seems to have earned notoriety for the slow pace at which cases were decided only six per cent of the complaints filed before the district forums in the state were decided within the time limit. While 23 per cent of the complaints brought before the forums were resolved within the time limit in Punjab, in Haryana, the percentage stood at 49 per cent, while in West Bengal and Assam it was 45 per cent and 32 per cent respectively. In Uttaranchal, the percentage stood at 37. According to the ministry, the retailers and manufacturers should set up effective system of consumer complaint resolution, so that the consumers seek justice through the consumer courts only when these systems fail them. But the reality is that
unless manufacturers and service providers fear the consumer courts,
they will not set up alternate dispute redressal mechanism. |
