Pros And Cons Of Consumer Protection

A consumer is basically a person who purchases goods and services for his own personal use. All of us can be regarded as consumers in one way or the other since we all buy goods and services for our survival on this planet. Nowadays we can see that consumers are being cheated in a number of ways. For example, they are charged high prices for inferior quality of goods, sometimes they are provided with less quantity than actually demanded and we can also see traders trying to sell their expired products to consumers by deceiving them. This leads to black marketing and hoarding. Traders have no concern for the health and safety of consumers and this is quite evident from the recent case of Nestle’s Maggi and Mother Dairy which were challenged

Hence, there was a strong need felt to protect the consumers from falling in the evil trap of traders. As a result, many legislations were formed (Like The Indian Contract Act, 1872, Sale of Goods Act, 1936, The Food Safety and standards Act, 2006, The Dangerous Drugs Act, 1952, Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1976, The Prevention of food adulteration act,1954, Consumer Protection Act, 1986, etc.) which aimed at protecting the interests of consumers and guaranteeing few rights to them such as Right to Information, Right to Safety, Right to choose , Right to be heard or Right to representation, Right to consumer education, Right to seek redressal, Right to healthy environment. The above rights are guaranteed to all the consumers under Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

Consumer Protection Act,1986 does not involve the technicalities of law thus provides a speedy and simple access to justice to the consumers. This Act also states provisions regarding the procedure of filing complaint in the consumer court. Before discussing such procedure, one should know who can file a consumer complaint. Only a ‘Consumer’ can file a complaint in the consumer court and consumer has been defined under section 2(d) of the said

Firstly, a person filing a complaint should identify the jurisdiction of the forum where the complaint has to be filed. There are two types of jurisdiction i.e. Territorial and pecuniary. After keeping both the jurisdictions in mind, the complainant should select the right forum.

Territorial jurisdiction of the forums :

Section 11(2), section 17 (2) and section 21 of the Act talks about territorial jurisdiction of a district forum, state commission and National Commission respectively. It states that a complaint can be filed in a district forum or State commission or National commission within the local limits of whose jurisdiction -

a) At the time of institution of complaint , the opposite party or if there are more than one , then each of the opposite parties, where there are more than one, actually and voluntarily resides or carries on business or has a branch office or personally works for gain,