STAR INDIA PVT LTD Vs. SH DALIP SINGH AND ANOTHER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD Mr. Sunil Kumar Singh, learned counsel for the appellants of the above mentioned two appeals. None is present on behalf of the respondents. The respondents/complainants appeared as caveators but have not turned up today. Their counsel Sri A.K. Vaidya is also not available. The cause list of date was displayed on the Internet through the Commission's website, still none has come forward on behalf of the respondents/complainants.

(2.) IN the circumstances, we proceed to decide both the appeals on merit.

(3.) THE District Consumer Forum by means of the impugned split judgments pronounced separately in complaint No. 135 of 2005 and 136 of 2005 have given rise to these two appeals. Both the above mentioned complaints were dismissed by the President of the District Forum, Bulandshahar in the light of this Commission's judgment in revision No. 174 of 2008. Sri Palip Singh was the complainant of both the complaint cases and he filed the two complaints with the allegations that M/s Star India Pvt. Ltd. and M/s MSM Discovery Pvt. Ltd. had committed deficiency in service by revoking the supply of network through cable. It was pleaded on behalf of the above named two appellants that the decoder signals being provided to the complainant had been discontinued in accordance with the terms and conditions of the agreement. Further, it was stated that Sri Dalip Singh being the licensee of the two service providers was not a consumer as he himself was providing service of cable network to the television owners. Whereas the President of the District Consumer Forum accepted the plea of trie appellants and dismissed both the complaints of Sri Dalip Singh, the two members partly allowed the complaints with a direction to the appellants to continue the service of the network until further orders. In other words, the members of the District Consumer Forum restrained M/s Star India Pvt. Ltd. and M/s MSM Discovery Pvt. Ltd. from snapping off the decoder signals to the complainant. It is surprising to note that the two members did not bother to see the reasonings of the judgment of the President of the District Forum nor they had disclosed any single reason to distinguish the judgment of this Commission dated 17.3.2009 pronounced in revision No. 174 of 2008. The two members simply banked upon the provisions of Section 3 of the Consumer Protection Act and arrived at a conclusion that the complainant was at liberty to seek redressal of his grievance either by knocking at the door of the District Forum or approaching the TRAI. However, the two members ignored the core issue that the District Consumer Forum was not competent to take cognizance of the two complaints on account, of the fact that there was no consumer dispute enshrined in his complaints. As said above, the Commission had arrived at a conclusion in the revision referred to above that the dispute between a cable operator and signal provider is not a consumer dispute for the simple reason that the former is the licensed distributor of the latter. Also, it may be observed that both, the signal provider, and the cable operator providing Network in the urban or rural areas are service providers and as such neither of them, is a consumer. Whereas the signal provider extends the facility of providing signals to the local cable operator, the latter also through the network provides service to the individual television owners. The observations of this Commission in revision No. 174 of 2008 may be reproduced as below: -