Apex Court Judgement Favours Consumers

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: In India, the consumers are a harassed lot, exploited by almost everybody and taken for a ride by most of the manufacturers of goods and suppliers of services. Whether a manufacturer palmed him off with inferior goods or he was a victim of some shoddy service by a hotelier, the only remedy available was to approach the court. Now anybody who has had the misfortune of seeking redressal from the court of law knows how complicated, time and money consuming the whole process is.

With a view to overcome all such handicaps and provide a cheaper, quicker and effective remedy, the Central Government enacted a new legislation complete with new machinery to provide redressal to hapless consumers. That is how the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, (the Act) came on the statute.

Under the Act, a three-tier redressal machinery has been provided with a District Forum in each district, followed by the State-level Commission with National Commission (NC) at the top. Final appeal, as always, will lie to the Supreme Court.

The proceedings before the Consumer Forums are in the nature of summary proceedings, which means that any case involving complicated questions of fact/law would not be normally entertained by the Consumer Forums.

However, what exactly is a complicated question would invariably depend upon the facts and circumstances of each case. At times it could happen that a particular Consumer Forum might refuse to entertain a particular complaint on the ground that it involves complicated questions. Refusal by a Consumer Forum to entertain a complaint would relegate the matter to civil courts thereby putting the consumer to great difficulty and negating the objective of the Act.

A somewhat similar situation arose in the case of CCI Chambers Co-operative Housing Society, an upmarket housing society in South Mumbai. [CCI Chambers Co-op Housing Society Ltd versus Development Credit Bank Ltd 2003 CTJ 849 (Supreme Court) (CP)].

The brief facts of the case are that, the housing society was maintaining a Savings Bank Account with the Development Credit Bank. The society had filed a complaint alleging deficiency of service by the bank. The contention of the society was that the bank had wrongly debited an amount of Rs 75,70,352 in its account by honouring certain cheques that bore forged signatures of the society.