Consumer to soon be king: Govt mulls more power for buyers through Consumer Protection (Amendment) Bill 2010 to be Introduced in parliament very soon.

Bill amplifies the provisions of the Act, facilitates quicker disposal of consumer complaints and rationalizes the qualifications and procedure of selection of President and members of the consumer fora.

If a shopkeeper doesn’t give you a bill for your purchase, you may soon be able to take him to court. At the same time, anything and everything you buy can be challenged legally if it is found to be of poor quality. A product need not be “hazardous” at the beginning to be “unsafe” later. Most importantly, consumers will be able to receive extra money from consumer fora in case of protracted litigation.
The central government is mulling a clutch of amendments to Consumer Protection Act, 1986, to empower consumers and to inject transparency in the three-tier consumer protection fora at the district, state and national levels. If accepted, the Act will make a shopkeeper not issuing cash memo or bills for goods sold as guilty under the law. The possession of bill makes a consumer a “bonafide” customer and its absence robs him of a stronger footing in courts if he challenges a sale. It will henceforth be dubbed an “unfair trade practice”.
The most consequential change may be the widening of the definition of “defect” and “deficiency”. While the Act clubs a few shortcomings in a product to qualify as “defect”, it is proposed to keep the definition open-ended — by replacing “means” which follows the spelt-out defects with “includes” — to qualify any unspecified flaw as defect.
The seller will in future have to give the buyer every bit of information about a commodity. It is proposed that withholding information about a good, which can influence the choice of a customer, should be treated as an offence.
The definition of “unfair trade practice” is to be expanded to include the unforeseen modus operandi of traders as offences. It will allow the law to not specify every unfair practice in the law.
A key change relates to safeguarding the consumers who are fleeced by the sellers through various contracts or conditions which place them in “unequal bargaining capacity”. The 199th report of the Law Commission had suggested the change to bring the consumers on a stronger footing to challenge any unfair practice. A contract or a condition will be “unconstitutional and illegal” if it is between two parties of unequal bargaining capacities, one-sided and unfair to the weaker party. Such a contract is said to be offending spirit of the Constitution.
The amendments also seek to bring transparency in consumer courts with regard to selection of presiding officers, filing of cases and discharge of justice. Consumers will be able to file “cases online” in what is an attempt to empower them. A key proposal says that presidents or members in consumer fora should be barred from pleading before them. This includes those who either held office in these fora or wielded administrative control there. It is an attempt to stop any unfair clout to be pedalled in the courts.
The Act seeks to empower consumer courts to award “interest” to compensate consumers who suffer from prolonged court battles.
State commissions are to be given more power to be able to renew their own orders if they notice factual mistakes in the records. The powers of judicial magistrate first class will be more explicit under the Act.
The quasi-judicial three-tier consumer disputes redressal machinery — national, state and district — provided by the Consumer Protection Act has led to a culture of consumer protection. The rising consciousness among people about their rights has led to consumers going to courts to seek redressal against unfair deals or cases of cheating.

source: Times Of India

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