In News Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Piyush Goyal introduced a host of new initiatives, including a right to repair portal and an NTH mobile app and opened new premises of the National Consumer Helpline centre in the national capital.
Consumer empowerment was going to be a paramount feature of a developed India and called for keeping consumers at the centre of all the initiatives.
About the initiative:
On the ‘right to repair’ portal, manufacturers would share the manual of product details with customers so that they could either repair by self, by third parties, rather than depend on original manufacturers. Initially, mobile phones, electronics, consumer durables, automobile and farming equipment’s would be covered.
Under the Consumer Protection law, a complaint is required to be disposed of within 90 days of its filing and within 150 days wherever expert evidence is required to be taken.
This reveals that the consumer commissions have not been able to meet the expectations of the consumers and have in fact been under severe strain to fulfil the objectives for which they were enacted
The disposal rate of complaints in the consumer commissions had been on an average of 89%. Since inception of consumer commissions, there was still a backlog of 6.24 lakh cases.
There are 673 consumer commissions in the country.
Consumer protection act 2019
It replaced the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 and came into force on 20th July 2020.
The Act includes establishment of the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) to promote, protect and enforce the rights of consumers.
Consumer Rights include:
The right to be protected against the marketing of goods, products or services which are hazardous to life and property;
The right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price of goods, products or services, so as to protect consumers from unfair trade practices
The right to be assured, wherever possible, access to a variety of goods, products or 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 practice or restrictive trade practices or unscrupulous exploitation of consumers;
The right to consumer awareness
The 1986 also had same rights but was limited to goods. But the 2019 act expanded the scope by inclusion of services.
