Question

State any four recent measures included in Consumer's Protection Act (CPA) in india.

Answer 1

In modern era the consumers are called the king of the market but they are suffering from lots of undesired elements such as misleading advertisements, underweight goods, unsatisfied services etc. Consequently to protect the basic consumer rights Government of India has taken development steps by way of enactment of various Acts and other measures to define, aware and help consumers. In India, the concept of consumer protection is not new, it is as old as trade and commerce itself. The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (68 of 1986) is a milestone in the history of socio-economic legislation in the country. The main objective of the new law is to provide for the better protection of the consumers unlike existing laws, which are punitive or preventive in nature. A Consumer can file complaint on a plain paper either handwritten or typed with no legal formalities for filing the complaint to three-tier adjudication system popularly known as "Consumer Courts" under Consumer Protection Act, 1986. Consumer courts may grant many kinds of relief to consumers. The consumer under CPA requires only small fees to pay in form of demand draft. The rigors of court procedures have been dispensed with and replaced with simple procedures as compared to the normal courts. In reality, Consumers have to realize their role and importance. The consumer movements can be winner movements only with the active involvement of consumer by knowing his rights and enforcing them. The consumer is exposed to many hazardous- physical, environmental and exploitation due to unfair trade practices. There is need of strong consumerism in our country on account of the many reasons e.g. illiteracy, less-education, ignorance and ill-information, poverty, lack of social awareness etc. For safeguarding the consumers, consumer must understand his rights and responsibilities. It is recognized theory of the jurisprudence that rights and duties are correlated and there can be no right without duty and vice versa. The present paper discusses the contribution made by Consumer Protection Act in Consumer Awareness and Consumerism.