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Kerala: Justice delayed is justice denied” is an overworked legal maxim that has been used at every level of the Indian judiciary, whenever it is confronted with cases that have been pending for years on end.
It now appears that the delays of the Indian justice delivery system spare no one, not even judges of Constitutional Courts.
A consumer complaint against Qatar Airlines, moved by a judge of the Kerala High Court, Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas in 2018, still remains pending before the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Ernakulam.
Justice Thomas’s matter before the consumer court dates back to two years before he would be appointed as a judge of the High Court.
In 2018, Justice Thomas, then a Senior Advocate practicing primarily before the Kerala High Court, decided to travel with his friends to Scotland to trek the popular trail, West Highland Way.
For the purpose, they booked flights that would reach Edinburgh, Scotland in time for their trek in April 2018. The bookings were made well in time, in December 2017, with Qatar Airlines.
On the day of their departure the group had a smooth flight from Kochi to Doha but was in for a rude shock when they attempted to board their next flight from Doha to Edinburgh.
Justice Thomas and four of his friends were told they were being offloaded with the only explanation from Qatar Airlines being that they had overbooked the flight.
Justice Thomas is stated to have informed them that overbooking is an unfair trade practice and regardless, any offloading should be done on a ‘last come first go’ basis. However, they were denied permission even after explaining that they had booked their tickets nearly 5 months prior.
The Airlines put them up in a hotel at the Airport and gave them a flight for the next day, which threw off the schedule they had planned for their trek.
According to the complaint filed by Justice Thomas, the Airlines gave the group a voucher for 250 US Dollars, a sum that is contended to be wholly inadequate.
A month after their trip itself, Justice Thomas sent a legal notice to Qatar Airlines claiming compensation but he did not receive any reply.
He subsequently approached the Ernakulam district commission seeking compensation of ₹10 lakh.
It was over four years later that the proceedings before the consumer court started in any substantial manner. Justice Thomas filed an application to get a list of all the passengeres on the Doha-Edinburgh flight along with the dates on which they had made their bookings.
The consumer court allowed Justice Thomas’s application on December 30, 2022.
Qatar Airlines then filed a review petition against this order. However, it was dismissed and the matter now stands posted for further consideration on March 1, 2023, nearly 5 years after the incident.
Justice Thomas’s case is only one of the umpteen such cases that are languishing before the various consumer commissions in India.
The current three-tier system to resolve consumer cases was conceived as an alternative to civil courts for providing speedy justice to consumers.
Though the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 mandates that all cases must be disposed within 3-5 months, the common man has resigned himself to the fact that it is likely for consumer cases to go on for much longer, perhaps even several years.
As per data available on the Confonet portal of the Central government’s Department of Consumer Affairs, as of February 19, 2023, there are 5,50,471 cases pending before the various consumer forums, including the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum (NCDRC). A majority of these cases are pending before district commissions.
One of the factors contributing to this state of affairs is the vacancy in many of the commissions, as admitted by the Central Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution in its 2022 year-end review of the Department of Consumer Affairs.
Each district commission is required to have one president and 2 members and without timely appointments to these posts, the commissions are rendered non-functional for lack of quorum.
In Ernakulam, there was a period in 2019 when the district commission had only a president and no members. There was again a long span in 2020 when there was no president either.
Several other state and district commissions were facing crises of a similar nature and it soon caught the attention of the higher echelons of the Indian judiciary.
In August 2021, the Supreme Court ordered the filling up of vacant positions at the NCDRC as well as the various State commissions.
In its 2022 year-end review, the Central government stated that its Department of Consumer Affairs has been “continuously taking up the matter with States/UTs Govts. for filling up the vacant posts in Consumer Commissions”.
Regardless, the vacancy position at the end of 2022 leaves much to be desired.
The Central government for its part seems inclined to take other steps to address the pendency plague that is the result of this vacancy coupled with technical and procedural issues.
In December 2021, the Centre announced a change to the pecuniary jurisdiction of the commissions giving a larger chunk to the NCDRC and state commissions leaving the district commissions to adjudicate disputes under ₹50 lakh alone.
In 2022, it held National Lok Adalats to dispose of a large number of consumer cases and the 2022 year-end review also mentions an intention to push alternative dispute resolution methods.
Whether any of these measures can make even a slight improvement to the fates of consumers who approach these commissions, remains to be seen.
Until then, consumers, whether common citizen or High Court judge, can do little but wait.
