Consumer protection councils, a complete failure

The 30-year-old Consumer Protection Act (CPA) envisages setting up of councils at the district, state and national levels. The six objectives of these councils are to protect the basic rights of the consumers, which is also the objective of the CPA.

These six rights include the right to be protected against the marketing of goods and services which are hazardous to life and property; the right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price of goods or services, so as to protect the consumer against unfair trade practices; the right to be assured, wherever possible, access to a variety of goods and services at competitive prices; the right to be heard and to be assured that consumer’s interests will receive due consideration at appropriate fora; the right to seek redressal against unfair trade practices or restrictive trade practices or unscrupulous exploitation of consumers; and the right to consumer education.

However, the working of these councils in the past has not been encouraging. Though the Central Consumer Protection Council (CCPC) is quite active and is transacting some useful business, the same cannot be said in the case of State Consumer Protection Councils (SCPC) and District Consumer Protection Councils (DCPC).

Most of the states have not constituted the SCPC and the DCPC and in a handful of states where these councils were constituted and notified in the State Gazette, neither were they made known to the public nor meetings held as per the provisions of the CPA.

The SCPC and the DCPC have become defunct because they have not been reconstituted after the term of the councils expired. At the state level, it is the secretary of the department in-charge of consumer affairs and the deputy commissioner at the district level who are responsible for convening the meetings.

One of the reasons for the malfunctioning of these councils lies with state governments. Firstly, state governments have no interest in constituting the councils for the simple reason that consumer protection is low in the agenda of the party in power. Secondly, in most of the sates, consumer affairs is attached to the Food and Civil Supplies Department. As a result, the skeleton staff in the department has no or little time to focus on consumer affairs. The activities related to Public Distribution System take away the whole time of the officials.

Thirdly, the rules framed by states with respect to consumer protection council differ and there is no clarity in the composition of the council. Besides, in some states, the choice of members to represent consumer organisations has been questioned in courts by those consumer groups who could not get a berth in the council.

As a result the SCPC/ DCPC are in disarray and the Centre does not have complete information about the latest position of these councils. With a view to have uniformity in nomination of members to these councils, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution (Department of Consumer Affairs) had, in January 2014, issued a fresh set of guidelines to states.

The guidelines say that the SCPC/DCPC shall consist of 11 members consisting of five official members, five non-official members and one consumer activist. The five official members may be selected from the list of 15 ministries/ departments consisting of Bureau of Indian Standards, Telecom, Health, Transport, Rural Development, Power, Public Works, Education, Social Justice, Agriculture, Information and Broadcasting, Panchayat Raj, Forest and Environment, Urban Development, Science and Technology.

The guidelines are very clear about who can be selected as non-official members. The five non-official members could be either representing consumer organisations or consumer activists in their individual capacity. In both the cases, the essential requirements have been specified.

In case of an individual representing consumer organisation, the guidelines say that the organisation must have been registered under the Societies Registration Act or a similar Act for the last five years. The organisation must have been active in consumer welfare activities for the last three years and must have a registered office and address.

Promoting consumer awareness
In addition, the consumer organisation should have contributed substantially to promote consumer awareness, like programmes targeting rural consumers, engagement in conducting testing of products, representing consumers in consumer forums, consumer advocacy, production of literature/ research papers etc.

The SCPC/ DCPC shall also include one individual consumer activist who has a convincing track record on consumer welfare activities for the last five years and such activities should have led to visible impact on the society and consumers as a whole.

The guidelines also specify the grounds on which the members may be disqualified. For instance. those members with political affiliation are disqualified. Individuals who are charge sheeted or convicted for criminal activities, engaged in unlawful activities, medically unfit and have poor knowledge about consumer laws are to be disqualified. More importantly, a member who is absent continuously for two meetings of the council will automatically stand disqualified. The tenure of these councils will be three years.

Though most states have the council on paper, meetings have not been convened since their inception. In Karnataka, the meeting of the SCPC has not been held for the past seven years. There is no information about its reconstitution, name of members, date of meetings, agenda etc.

The website of the department is silent on this issue. Hence, the guidelines say that the SCPC/DCPC shall meet at least once every quarter. More importantly, state governments must now amend the Consumer Protection Rules and furnish information to the Centre every month.

(The writer is Member, Central Consumer Protection Council, Government of India)