Common
Cause, A Registered Society Vs. Union
of India & Ors [1993] INSC 7 (7 January 1993)
Ahmadi,
A.M. (J) Ahmadi, A.M. (J) Reddy, K. Jayachandra (J)
CITATION:
1993 AIR 1403 1993 SCR (1) 10 JT 1993 (1) 67 1993 SCALE (1)17
ACT:
Consumer
Protection Act 1986:
Section
9--Setting up of District Fora--Non-implementation by some States/Union
Territories--Stop-gap arrangement of District Judges functioning as Presidents
of District Fora--Termination of--Statutory requirement of constituting
District Forum for each district or for 2 or 3 districts clubbed
together--Directions to State Governments/Union Territories--Issued.
HEAD NOTE:
The
Consumer Protection Act, 1986 envisaged a three-tier fora comprising the
District Forum, the State Commission and the National Commission for redressal
of grievances of consumers. The Petitioner-Society preferred the present Writ
Petitions complaining that the implementation of the provisions was sluggish
since the machinery for redressing the grievances of poor consumers at the
base-level viz. the District Forum had not been set up in all the districts
except a few.
As a
stop-gap arrangement, this Court on 17.1.90 directed that every district should
have a District Forum with the District Judge as its President This Court further
directed the State Governments concerned to appoint two more members in every
District Forum. It also scrutinised the information received from various
States/Union Territories and considered the difficulties faced by them in the
matter of setting up District Forum in each district Thereafter, disposing of
the Writ Petitions by giving directions to States/Union Territories, this Court
HELD :
1. Under Section 9 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 It is the
responsibility of the State Government to set-up a District Forum with the
approval of Central Government The State Government cannot absolve Itself of
this responsibility by virtually perpetuating the ad hoc arrangement The High
Courts have not withdrawn their personnel only 11 because they have respected
this Court's request made to them. But there is a limit beyond which an ad hoc
stop-gap arrangement cannot last In the circumstances it Is most appropriate to
indicate to the State Governments that the ad hoc arrangement evolved by this
Court will terminate within a fixed time-frame. [17EF]
2. It
is directed that wherever a sitting District Judge is functioning as the
President of a District Forum, if the workload exceeds the minimum monthly load
of 150 cases consistently for a six month period, the High Court will convey
the same to the State Government/Union Territory Administration which will
within a period of six months from the date of receipt of the communication
appoint a regular independent District Forum as envisaged by section 9 of the Act.
After the expiry of the said six months period, the High Court will be free to
terminate the ad hoc stop-gap arrangement of loaning the services of a sitting
District Judge work as the President of the District Forum under intimation to
the State Government/Union Territory Administration and it will then be the
responsibility of the latter to make provision for carrying out the purposes of
the Act. [18C-D]
3. It
is further directed that in districts where the workload does not exceed the
minimum fixed by this Court's order dated August 5, 1991, the ad hoc
arrangement may continue for one year during which period the State
Government/Union Territory Administration Will take steps to constitute an
independent District Forum for each district or if the Central Government
permits one such forum for 2 or 3 districts clubbed together. After the expiry
of the period of one year, the concerned High Courts will be free to terminate
the ad hoc stop-gap arrangement of loaning the services of sitting District
Judges to work as President of the District Forum in which case it will be the
responsibility of the State Government/Union Territory Administration to make
provision for carrying out the purposes of the Act. [18E,G]
4. A
copy of this order will be sent to the Chief Secretary of each State
Government/Union Territory Administration to take steps to meet Its statutory
obligations under the Act within the above time-frame with a view to ensuring
that the interest of the consumers is fully protected. Needless to point out
that more than sufficient time has been allowed to the State Governments/Union
Territories to fulfil their statutory obliga- 12 tion of setting up a District
Forum in every district as envisaged by section 9 of the Act and the concerned
Government will now be alive to its responsibility to do so within the time
extended hereby. [18H, 19AB]
CIVIL
EXTRAORDINARY JURISDICTION : Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1141 of 1988.
(Under
Article 32 of the Constitution of India.)
WITH Writ
Petition (Civil) No. 742 of 1990.
(Under
Article 32 of the Constitution of India.)
Altaf
Ahmad, Additional Solicitor General, R.N. Sachthey, Dr. N.M Ghatate, P.S. Poti,
A.S. Nambiar, Rajeev Dhawan, (H.D. Shourie-in-person), Anip Sachthey, Chava Badri
Nath Babu, Rashmi Dhirwal, B.R. Jad, Ms. Bina Gupta, Ms. Monika Mohil, Monika Lal,
Sunil Dogra, J.H. Parekh, N.K. Sahu, P.H. Parekh, Sunita Mukherjee, Ms. H. Wahi,
V.K.S. Choudhary, (Adv. General), K.B. Mishra, Vishwajit Singh, Vikrant Yadav,
N. Singh, Ms. Sushma, B.K. Prasad, A.S. Bhasme, K.R. Nambiar, JR. Das, S. Sinha
and Das, V. Balaji, P.N. Ramalingam, Ms. S. Vasudevan, P.K. Manohar, Ms. A. Subhashini,
B. Parthasarathy, M. Veerappa, S.K. Agnihotri, A.K. Panda, Pravir Choudhary,
S.K. Nandy, Pramod Swarup, Ms. Indu Malhotra, Ashok Mathur, D.N. Mukherjee,
S.H. Wahi, Kailash Vasudev, Mr. G.K. Gansal, Ms. Indra Makwana, K. Swami, Gopal
Singh, Ms. Kamini Jaiswal, Manoj Swarup, S. Kumar, Ms. S. Janani, R.S. Suri, Aruneswar
Gupta, T.V.S.N. Chari, Ms. Kusum Chaudhary, Gaopal Singh,
Ms. Alpna Kirpal, Dushyant A. Dave and V. Krishnamurthy for the appearing
parties.
The Judgement
of the Court was delivered by AHMADI, J. The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (Act
of 1986) received the assent of the President on December 24, 1986.
This
legislation was enacted for the protection of the interests of the consumers
and for that purpose to provide for the establishment of Consumer Councils and
other authorities for the settlement of consumers' disputes and matters
connected therewith. Section 1(3) thereof provided that it shall come into
force on such date as the Central Government will provide by notification.
13
Since different dates could be appointed by different States and for different
provisions the provisions of the Act did not come into force on a single date
in the entire country.
The
provisions contained in Chapters 1, II & IV were brought into force by the
Central Government w.e.f. April 15, 1987
and Chapter III from July
1, 1987. The Consumer
Protection Rules, 1987 made under Section 30(1) of the Act were also brought
into force w.e.f. April
15, 1987. For the sake
of brevity these two pieces of legislations shall hereafter be referred to as
'the Act' and 'the Rules', respectively.
The
object of the legislation, as the Preamble of the Act proclaims, is 'for better
protection of the interests of consumers'. During the last few years preceding
the enactment there was in this country a marked awareness among the consumers
of goods that they were not getting their money's worth and were being exploited
by both traders and manufacturers of consumer goods. The need for consumer redressal
fora was, therefore, increasingly felt.
Understandably,
the therefore legislation was introduced and enacted with considerable
enthusiasm and fanfare as a path- breaking benevolent legislation intended to
protect the consumer from exploitation by unscrupulous manufacturers and
traders of consumer goods. A threetier for a comprising the District Forum, the
State Commission and the National Commission came to be envisaged under the Act
for redressal of grievances of consumers. The petitioner, common cause, a
registered society, espousing the cause of members of the public, filed this
petition two years after the Act came into force complaining that the
implementation of the provisions of the Act was sluggish, in that, the
machinery for redressing the grievances of the poor consumers at the base-leval
i.e. the Districts Forums, had not been set up in all the districts in the
country except a few. This Writ Petition was, therefore, moved under Article 32
of the Constitution for a direction to the appropriate Government for urgent
implementation of the provision of the Act in this behalf. Similar grievances
are made in the second petition also.
Notices
were issued to the Union, the State Governments and the Union Territories requiring them to file counters indicating the action taken
for setting up a District Forum in each district under the Act. After the
counters were filed by most of the States, except a few, this Court passed an
order on January 17,
1990 directing that
every district shall have a District Forum with the District Judge of the
district as its President. This 14 was a stop-gap arrangement. A further
direction was given that the concerned Governments will appoint two more
members to constitute the District Forum in every district. The President of
the National Commission was requested to obtain first-hand information from
every State/U.T. about full compliance of the requirements of the statute. The
High Courts were also requested to accord appropriate sanction/consent for the
functioning of District Judges as Presidents of the District Fora. Pursuant to
the above order the President of the National Commission visited the States of
Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and filed his
interim report dated April
19, 1990 pointing out
that in all these States the District Forum existed in only a few districts and
the Majority of the districts remained unserviced. A second detailed report
covering the States of Gujarat, Goa,
Assam, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh (U.T.) and Delhi (U.T.) was submitted
on October 15, 1990 depicting more or less the same
situation. Directions were issued from time to time for establishing a regular
District Forum in every district to the States/U.Ts. by this Court but suffice
it to say that the progress was rather slow. Even in districts where regular
District Forum existed there was no proper accommodation and the staff was
inadequate. Directions in this regard had also to be given from time to time.
Even though specific directions were given from time to time to each State/U.T.
separately, the progress was both tardy and sluggish. No useful purpose will be
served by traversing the orders passed from time to time to exact obedience for
securing the implementation of the statutory requirements from the defaulting
State/U.T. Subsequently, by an order dated August 5, 1991 this Court directed
that only in those districts where the minimum monthly load was less than 150
cases consistently for a period of six months, it would be open to the State
U.T. to continue the arrangement of a sitting District Judges as the President
of the District Forum with the concurrence of the High Court concerned. In
other districts where the work-load exceeded this minimum, the Court ordered
setting up of a regular District Forum for each such district. In order to
ensure that the interest of the consumers was protected each District Judge was
asked to devote atleast three alternate days in a week. Despite this order the
extent of compliance reported as on December 20, 1991 was not as significant as we would
have expected.
Further
time elapsed but the progress was slow and even the information in that behalf
was delayed. Ultimately on March 23, 1992
we passed an order to the following effect :
15
"We would like to mention that if despite this last opportunity given to
the concerned authorities to furnish the information as sought by our order of
20.12.91, the information is not forthcoming, we would be constrained to pass
appropriate orders without waiting any further in the matter." The above
facts bring out in brief the difficulties experienced by this Court in securing
the implementation of the requirements of a benevolent statute meant to protect
the consumers. One wonders why this indifference! We have scrutinised the
information received from the various States/U.Ts. from time to time and the
picture that emerges is that once the District Judges were required to fill the
gap, no doubt temporarily, most of the State Governments have shown total lack
of sense of urgency for setting up regular district-wise fora as envisaged by
the Act. Some of the States like Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, etc.,
have made practically no effort to carry out the intendment of the Act. In Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh there is a
regular set up in a single district only while the rest of the districts are
manned by sitting District Judges. In Punjab all the districts are serviced by sitting District Judges. In some
other States like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar,
Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu only a few districts have regular
set-ups while the majority of districts are manned by sitting District Judges.
From certain States the information received is incomplete. To say the least
the emerging scenario is far too depressing betraying a total lack of
willingness on the part of most of the States to seriously implement one of the
most benevolent legislations. It is such indifference which renders a well
meaning legislation intended to protect a large body of consumers from
exploitation ineffective. Many such benevolent legislations have met similar
fate because of such indifference or influence wielded by vested interests with
powers that be. Notwithstanding the increasing awareness amongst the, consumers
and notwithstanding the fact that consumer protection movement is gaining
ground in other countries, it is difficult to comprehend why the State
Governments have been indifferent and, if we may say so, unconcerned about the
need to establish regular fora in all the districts with despatch to ensure
early disposal of consumer complaints. Considerable time, almost over five
years, have now elapsed since the provisions of the Act were brought into force
and we should have expected the regular forum in position in every district 16
by now. It is conceivable that the consumer protection movement is gaining
ground in other countries because of strong consumer bodies having succeeded in
organising the consumer: such powerful bodies are far and few in this country
and they are unable to exert sufficient pressure on the powers that be as
compared to the pressure brought by vested interests because the consumers in
this country are not organised as one would like them to be. Whatever may be
the reason which permits such indifference on the part of the States, the fact
remains that the States have shown no sense of urgency in setting up the
network for protection of the consumers at the district level. Since the
sitting District Judges are already burdened with heavy dockets of their own,
even the lure for extra payment has not worked to ensure early disposal of the
consumer complaints as they just do not have the time for it. Even this Court's
anxiety to see that consumer complaints do not pile up has not activated the
State Governments into speedy action even though they were made aware through
their counsel that most of the High Courts had reported that their District
Judges would not be able to spare three days in a week to deal with consumer
complaints as their regular work was likely to suffer. Many High Courts have
shown their inability to spare their District Judges for this work,
notwithstanding its importance, as the pressure of regular work on the District
Judges is great and they are finding it difficult to cope with the same and
even urgent matters get postponed, thereby adversely affecting the litigants.
The High Courts have understandably shown their unwillingness to continue with
this arrangement which they had initially consented to on the ground that it
was of a purely temporary and stop-gap nature. They now complain, and in our
opinion rightly, that considerable time has now elapsed since this arrangement
was worked out and they find it difficult to continue with it as it is causing
prejudice to the interest of litigants for whom the District Court are meant.
At the same time we cannot be oblivious to the need to protect the consumer
from exploitation that would be the ultimate effect if redressal fora are not
available or are suddenly withdrawn. The need for setting up regular fora in
all districts of every State cannot be over-emphasised.
Section
9 of the Act envisages the setting up of a three- tier redressal mechanism,
viz., (i) the District Forum (ii) the State Commission and (iii) the National
Commission. So far as the State Commission and National Commission are
concerned they are in position and except for minor problems of staffing
pattern, accommodation, etc, (which they can resolve 17 with the concerned
Governments) there are not many serious issues demanding this Court's
interference. It is to be hoped that such minor irritants will be removed by
the concerned Governments without loss of time. However, the real problem is
concerning the setting up of the fora at the district level. Here the
difficulty pointed out by the concerned Governments is regarding the
availability of accommodation. But then there is nothing on record to conclude
that despite serious endeavours made by the concerned Governments they have not
been able to overcome this difficulty in the last over five years. It is
difficult to believe that a State Government would not be able to arrange for
accommodation in a span of over five years if it was seriously minded to do so.
The impression which has surfaced is that once the ad hoc stop-gap arrangement
was made by this Court, the concerned Governments did not view the problem
seriously. On account of inaction on their part the ad hoc arrangement in
continuing and, as pointed out by certain High Courts, to the detriment of the
other of the other litigants whose cases are pending in the District Courts
since long. What then is the way out? We have to weigh the interest of the
consumers on the one hand and the efficient functioning of the judiciary to
deliver the goods to the other litigants whose cases are pending since long on
the other and find a way out which will not prejudice either. In so doing, we
must keep in mind the fact that under Section 9 of the Act it is the responsibility
of the State Government to set-up a District Forum with the approval of the
Central Government.
The
State Government cannot absolve itself of this responsibility by virtually
perpetuating the ad hoc arrangement. The High Courts have not withdrawn their
personnel only because they have respected this Court's request made to them.
But there is a limit beyond which an ad hoc stop-gap arrangement cannot last.
In the circumstances it seems most appropriate to us to indicate to the State
Governments that the ad hoc arrangement evolved by this Court will terminate
within a fixed time-frame.
The
High Court of Gujarat has made a suggestion that the State Governments should
be permitted to club 2/3 districts and constitute a single forum where the work
is not sufficient. This Court was of the view that if the workload exceeds 150
cases in six months immediately preceding the cut-off date a case for an
independent District Forum was made out but if the workload was less than that,
the ad hoc arrangement of the District Judge functioning as the President of a
District Forum may continue for sometime.
Here
the suggestion of the High Court of Gujarat for 18 clubbing 2/3 districts can
be considered by the State in consultation with the Central Government under
Section 9 of the Act. Unfortunately, accurate figures of the pendency of
consumer cases have not been supplied to this Court by all the States and on
account of that handicap our order has to be of a general nature.
In the
result we give the following directions:
(1)
Wherever a sitting District Judge is functioning as the President of a District
Forum, if the workload exceeds the minimum monthly load of 150 cases
consistently for a six month period, the High Court will convey the same to the
State Government/U.T. administration which will within a period of six months
from the date of receipt of the communication appoint a regular independent
District Forum as envisaged by section 9 of the Act. After the expiry of the
said six months period, the High Court will be free to terminate the ad hoc
stop-gap arrangement of loaning the services of a sitting District Judge to
work as the President of the District forum under intimation to the State
Government/U.T. administration and it will then be the responsibility of the
latter to make provision for carrying out the purposes of the Act.
(2) In
districts where the workload does not exceed the minimum fixed by this Court's
order dated August 5,
1991, the ad hoc
arrangement may continue for one year from today during which period the State
Government/U.T. administration will take steps to constitute an independent
District Forum for each district or if the Central Government permits one such
forum for 2/3 districts clubbed together. After the expiry of the period of one
year from today, the concerned High Courts will be free to terminate the ad hoc
stop-gap arrangement of loaning the services of sitting District Judges to work
as President of the District Forum in which case it will be the responsibility
of the State Government /U.T. administration to make provision for carrying out
the purposes of the Act.
(3) A
copy of this order will be sent to the Chief Secretary of each State
Government/U.T.
administration
to take steps to meet with its statutory obligations under the Act within the
19 above time-frame with a view to ensuring that the interest of the consumers
is fully protected. Needless to point out that more than sufficient time has
been allowed to the State Governments/U.Ts. to fulfill their statutory
obligation of setting up a District Forum in every district as envisaged by
section 9 of the Act and the concerned Government will now be alive to its
responsibility to do so within the time extended hereby. The of Registrar shall
forward the copy in less than a weeks time" The Writ Petition No. 1141 of
1988 shall stand disposed of according with costs which we quantify at Rs. 5000
per State Government/U.T. The other Writ Petition No. 742 of 1990 shall also
stand similarly disposed of with no order as to costs.
G.N. Petitions
disposed of.
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