‘Presiding judges should change their legal mindset and view everything from a consumer angle’
Most consumers are resigned to their fate due to the inordinate delays in clearance of complaints, there are a whopping 3.44 lakh pending in the State and district consumer fora across the country, Visakha Consumers Council (VCC) secretary P. Rama Rao said.
Participating in the ‘World Consumers Rights Day’ celebration here on Friday he said that the consumer courts had been created to deal with consumer-related cases and to reduce the burden and drudgery of the civil courts and above all to deliver speedy justice to the consumers. The large pendency of cases in consumer courts is defeating its very purpose. Mr. Rama Rao said that the presiding judges of consumer courts should change their legal mindset and view everything from a consumer angle. Otherwise they would be defeating the very concept of consumer rights and speedy justice. Lawyers and judges should be trained and oriented on the concept of consumer courts.
Former Vice-Chancellor of Nagarjuna University V. Balamohan Das said that American President John. F. Kennedy was the first to speak on consumer rights and create a forum for the consumers who also represent the general populace. From morning to night every person will have a brush with 87 products which are connected to consumer rights. He said that India’s official consumer protection apparatus suffers from critical gaps when it comes to delivery of justice to consumers in the country.
The gaps include significant deficits in human infrastructure as also physical infrastructure at thousands of India’s state and district consumer courts in the country. An analysis threw up inadequate infrastructure as among the key reasons for the rising pendency levels.
