Ahmadi, J. - (1.) The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (Act of 1986) received the assent of the President on December 24, 1986. This legislation was enacted for the protection of the interests of the consumers and for that purpose to provide for the establishment of Consumer Councils and other authorities for the settlement of consumers' disputes and matters connected therewith. S. 1(3) thereof provided that it shall come into force on such date as the Central Government will provide by notification. Since different dates could be appointed by different States and for different provisions the provisions of the Act did not come into force on a single date in the entire country. The provisions contained in Chapters I,II and IV were brought into force by the Central Government w.e.f. April 15, 1987 and Chapter III from July 1, 1987. The Consumer Protection Rules, 1987, made under S. 30(1) of the Act were also brought into force w.e.f. April 15, 1987. For the sake of brevity these two pieces of legislations shall hereafter be referred to as 'the Act' and 'the Rules'. respectively.
(2.) The object of the legislation, as the Preamble of the Act proclaims, is 'for better protection of the interests of consumers'. During the last few years preceding the enactment there was in this country a marked awareness among the consumers of goods that they were not getting their money's worth and were being exploited by both traders and manufacturers of consumers goods. The need for consumer redressal fora was, therefore, increasingly felt. Understandably, therefore, legislation was introduced and enacted with considerable enthusiasm and fanfare as a path breaking benevolent legislation intended to protect the consumer from exploitation by unscrupulous manufacturers and traders of consumer goods. A three-tier fora comprising the District Forum, the State Commission and the National Commission came to be envisaged under the Act for redressal of grievances of consumers. The petitioner, common cause, a registered society, espousing the cause of members of the public, filed this petition two years after the Act came into force complaining that the implementation of the provisions of the Act was sluggish, in that, the machinery for redressing the grievances of the poor consumers at the base-level i.e. the District Forums, had not been set up in all the districts in the country except a few. This writ petition was, therefore, moved under Art. 32 of the Constitution for a direction to the appropriate Government for urgent implementation of the provision of the Act in this behalf. Similar grievances are made in the second petition also.
(3.) Notices were issued to the Union, the State Governments and the Union Territories requiring them to file counters indicating the action taken for setting up a District Forum in each district under the Act. After the counters were filed by most of the States, except a few, this Court passed an order of January 17, 1990 directing that every district shall have a District Forum with the District Judge of the district as its President. This was a stop-gap arrangement. A further direction was given that the concerned Governments will appoint two more members to constitute the District Forum in every district. The President of the National Commission was requested to obtain first-hand information from every State/U.T. about full compliance of the requirements of the statute. The High Courts were also requested to accord appropriate sanction/ consent for the functioning of District Judges as Presidents of the District Fora. Pursuant to the above order the President of the National Commission visited the States of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and filed his interim report dated April 19, 1990 pointing out that in all these States the District Forum existed in only a few districts and the majority of the districts remained unserviced. A second detailed report covering the States of Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh (U.T.) and Delhi (U.T.) was submitted on October 15, 1990 depicting more or less the same situation. Directions were issued from time to time for establishing a regular District Forum in every district to the States/ U.Ts. by this Court but suffice it to say that the progress was rather slow. Even in districts where regular District Forum existed there was no proper accommodation and the staff was inadequate. Directions in this regard had also to be given from time to time. Even though specific directions were given from time to time to each State/U.T. separately, the progress was both tardy and sluggish. No useful purpose will be served by traversing the orders passed from time to time to exact obedience for securing the implementation of the statutory requirements from the defaulting State/U.T. Subsequently, by an order dated August 5, 1991 this Court directed that only in those districts where the minimum monthly load was less than 150 cases consistently for a period of six months, it would be open to the, State/U.T. to continue the arrangement of a sitting District Judge as the President of the District Forum with the concurrence of the High Court concerned. In other districts where the work-load exceeded this minimum, the Court ordered setting up of a regular District Forum for each such district, In order to ensure that the interest of the consumers was protected each District Judge was asked to devote at least three alternative days in a week. Despite this order the extent of compliance reported as on December 20, 1991 was not as significant as we would have expected. Further time elapsed but the progress was slow and even the information in that behalf was delayed. Ultimately on March 23, 1992 we passed an order to the following effect: "We would like to mention that if despite this last opportunity given to the concerned authorities to furnish the information as sought by our order of 20-12-91, the information is not forthcoming, we would be constrained to pass appropriate orders without waiting any further in the matter." The above facts bring out in brief the difficulties experienced by this Court in securing the implementation of the requirements of a benevolent statute meant to protect the consumers. One wonders why this indifference!;