Courts struggle with deluge of cases

CONSUMER PROTECTION: Lack of infrastructure hampers speedy disposal of disputes.

The Delhi State Consumer Commission led by Justice JD Kapoor has cleared 9,710 out of the backlog of 10,000 cases in the last four years. On an average, it gives 15 orders every day. Its work never fails to impress all. What worries consumer right activists is that Kapoor retires in nine months. Will the commission lose its momentum once that happens?

Maybe it won’t. But, if the performance of the consumer courts in the rest of the country is anything to go by, the fears could hardly be called misplaced. Short of staff, these courts are dealing with a gargantuan backlog of cases. Worse, there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

The bottomline is clear: Full-fledged consumerism might have dawned on India when PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh opened the Indian economy in 1991, but the consumer is still not the king that he is supposed to be in an open market.

To get a feel of the current wave of consumerism sweeping across the country, look at the mind-boggling numbers. In July, India added over 9 million phone users. Over 1.25 million Indians bought cars in the last one year. Two-wheeler sales were almost ten times that number.

Consumer electronics worth Rs 32,000 crore were sold last year and fast moving consumer goods sales could easily be double of that.

The numbers are huge and the task cut out for the consumer courts is onerous. Are they ready to cope with it? The numbers tell a story that does not hold out much hope for aggrieved consumers.

Apart from the State Consumer Commission, there are ten district consumer redress forums in Delhi. Each has at least 1,500 pending cases each. Justice Kapoor has asked these forums to decide on at least 60 cases every month or face penalties.

In Ahmedabad, the State Commission handles around 200 cases every month and the backlog has added up to 5,152. The Pune district forum has 964 pending cases. In West Bengal which receives 5,000 cases every month, there are 5,320 pending cases. The state minister for consumer affairs, Naren De, proudly says that 73,000 pending cases were disposed of, though only 25 per cent were solved on time.

There is nothing wrong with the law, though. The Consumer Protection Act of 1986, says that a case should be cleared in 90 days and if there are more than 500 cases pending, then in 150 days. Delhi State Consumer Commission Member KL Sahni says it is next to impossible to do that. To facilitate that, more benches ought to be set up as recommended by the SP Bagla Committee which said that as and when the pendency increased to more than 500 cases, the sanctioned strength should be automatically increased and doubled.

Obviously, this has not happened. Till the situation improves, it is consumerism without protection of consumer rights — an imperfect market.