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For a long time now, consumers and consumer groups have been expressing strong reservations about the presence of lawyers in courts. The reasons are many. First and foremost,
these quasi-judicial forums are supposed to render justice quickly by
following a simple procedure. However, lawyers invariably introduce
not just legalese, but also complicated questions of law in the
proceedings, thereby not only delaying the adjudication process, but
also making it difficult for a lay customer fighting the case to even
understand what is happening.
In fact, several studies on the functioning of the courts have revealed that people find it expensive to fight a case before because they strongly feel that they cannot win if they do not hire a lawyer and that makes the whole process terribly expensive. Then there are also other issues such as the adjournments that lawyers seek, thereby slowing down the process of adjudication and also causing immense harassment to the person concerned. Courts are meant for clients to fight for their rights. However, if you visit some of the courts in the country, you will find them no different from`A0civil courts. Lawyers occupy all the front benches; they even have an exclusive chamber in many of the courts, but the poor complainant has no such facility, and in fact feels like a second class citizen in a court meant for her/him. When the Consumer Protection Act was being amended in 2003, the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs tried to restrict the presence of lawyers in these courts. Accordingly, one of the clauses in the amendment Bill said that`A0the opposite party can hire a lawyer only if the complainant has hired one, not otherwise. As can be expected, there were vociferous protests from lawyers around the country against this and eventually, the lawyers’ lobby, won and`A0when the amendments were finally passed by Parliament, this particular`A0provision had been removed. The CPA is being amended again now and it is time consumers picked up this issue once again. All that is needed is for a thousand people to write to the Consumer Affairs and Law Ministries and put pressure on them to protect their interests by restricting the appearance of lawyers before these forums. Unless those seeking justice take such action, they will lose out this time, too. To drive home this point, I wish to quote the recent experience of an activist at the Chennai south consumer forum on April 1 this year. S Pushpavanam, who is a Tiruchi-based consumer activist and secretary of the Consumer Protection Council in Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu, was on April 1, abused, threatened and manhandled by a group of advocates at the forum, while he was waiting for his case to be heard. What did he do to annoy them? The first row where he was sitting, the lawyers argued, was reserved for them and a "lowly consumer" had no right to sit there.`A0Strangely, even the president of the forum refused to intervene. Eventually, Pushpavanam had to vacate the seat in order to allow the proceedings to go on, and even when he came out of the forum, he was threatened and manhandled by the lawyers. The activist has now written to the presidents of the courts at the district, state and the national levels, urging them to issue suitable directions to the Bar Associations to ensure that lawyers desisted from behaving in such unruly manner. In fact many people complain that the judicial members of some of the forums give preferential treatment to advocates. Considering that persons who argue their cases without the help of lawyers take a lot of trouble to appear before these courts, the least that the government can do is to provide them a waiting room with some basic facilities like water and a computer. The ministry should also provide for helplines at every forum to help litigants who may need some assistance in writing their complaints or putting together the required evidence. It would also go a long way in prompting them to fight their cases themselves instead of hiring lawyers.
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