The Hindu : 'NGOs can represent consumers on fora'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 13, 2003

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National

'NGOs can represent consumers on fora'

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI April 12. In a significant ruling that will benefit consumers, the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has held that consumer associations and organisations can represent and argue for consumers before consumer courts.

This ruling was given recently by the Commission, comprising the President, D.P. Wadhwa, and Members, J.K. Mehra, Rajyalakshmi Rao and B.K. Taimni, after hearing various consumer bodies.

The Commission said that the composition of consumer courts was such that it included not only judicial but also non-judicial members from the field of administration and social work. And this work envisaged a new approach "which is to be shorn of the shackled of procedural law so that access to justice is easy and simple".

"To say that a consumer association cannot plead the case of the consumer or an association cannot appear before a consumer court will be to defeat the purposes of the Consumer Protection Act itself," it said.

The issue for determination arose after the Tamil Nadu State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission held in April last that "an authorised representative of the litigant complainant-consumer not being an advocate could not at all be given the right of audience though there was no prohibition for the party himself to represent his own case under the Act". The State Commission did not allow the representative of a consumer organisation to argue the case of a widow against a premier hospital.

The National Commission invited the views of various consumer bodies as well as that of amicus curiae, Gopal Subramaniam, and others to decide this issue.

Mr. Subramaniam, citing various apex court judgments, submitted that an authorised representative could certainly have a right of audience and his right was not merely confined to appearance before a consumer forum.

He pointed out that the right of audience could not be taken away by referring to the provisions of Civil Procedure Code, which had no application as the Consumer Protection Act was itself a departure from the ordinary procedure in CPC. "We have to break the shackles of a procedure which is too technical in civil jurisprudence," the amicus curiae said.

The Commission fully agreed with this and incorporated his submissions as part of the order and modified the ruling of the State Commission.

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