The Consumer Protection Act 1986 vs 2019 comparison is usually presented as a list of new features, and a list of new features cannot answer the question a reader brings to it. The reader wants a verdict. A complainant wants to know whether the replacement statute leaves a person with a grievance better placed than the statute it repealed. A business wants to know whether the replacement made its obligations clearer or merely heavier. An aspirant preparing for examination wants to know which differences carry marks and which are decoration. This article answers those questions by adjudication rather than by inventory. It takes ten dimensions that decide real cases, states the position under each statute on each dimension, allocates the dimension to the consumer, to the business, or to neither side, and derives its conclusion from the count. A verdict that is not earned by the count is an opinion wearing a costume, and the discipline of this comparison is that the count comes first and the conclusion follows it.

The method matters because the two statutes are easy to misdescribe in both directions. One error treats the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 as a wholly new code that swept away a failed experiment. It did not. The three tier structure of District, State and National Commissions was retained, the definition of a consumer was carried forward in materially the same terms, the two year limitation period with power to condone delay was carried forward, the list of reliefs a commission may grant was carried forward with additions rather than replaced, and the provision that the Act operates in addition to and not in derogation of other laws was carried forward. The opposite error treats the 2019 Act as a renaming exercise with higher monetary limits. It was not that either. The later statute created a regulator that can act without any complainant, created a product liability cause of action that the earlier statute did not contain, created a statutory mediation chapter, brought electronic commerce inside the statutory scheme by definition and by rules, armed two of the three commissions with power to declare unfair contract terms void, and removed the monetary ceiling that had capped the deposit required from a person appealing against an order to pay. Those are structural changes, and they are the changes on which the verdict in this article turns.

Consumer Protection Act 1986 vs 2019: the two statutes in outline

The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 was Act 68 of 1986. Its provisions commenced in stages, with Chapters I, II and IV brought into force on 15 April 1987 and Chapter III, which contained the redressal machinery, brought into force on 1 July 1987. It was amended repeatedly, most consequentially in 1993 and in 2002, and the pecuniary limits that governed it for most of its working life were the limits settled by the 2002 amendment. Its architecture was spare. Consumer Protection Councils at the Centre, in the states and in the districts existed to promote and protect consumer rights, but they were advisory bodies. The operative machinery was adjudicatory: a District Forum, a State Commission and a National Commission, each with original, appellate and in the higher tiers revisional jurisdiction, each empowered to grant a defined set of reliefs, and each dependent on a complainant arriving with a grievance. Nothing in the statute could move until a consumer moved it. The full account of that statute, its amendments and its case law belongs to the article on the Consumer Protection Act 1986, and this comparison takes from it only what the ten dimensions require.

The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 was Act 35 of 2019. It received assent in August 2019 and its provisions commenced in two tranches, the bulk on 20 July 2020 and the remaining provisions, including the product liability chapter, on 24 July 2020. Section 107 repealed the 1986 Act, subject to savings that keep pending proceedings and accrued rights under the older regime. Its architecture is wider in two directions. Vertically it retains the three commissions, renamed District Commission, State Commission and National Commission, with the District Forum becoming a District Commission and acquiring a power of review that the Forum lacked. Horizontally it adds institutions the older statute never had: the Central Consumer Protection Authority, mediation cells attached to the commissions, and a set of offences and penalties aimed at conduct in the market rather than at disputes between two parties. The full account of that statute belongs to the article on the Consumer Protection Act 2019, which also owns the litigation over the appointment rules made under it. Readers who want the whole field arranged as one map rather than as a contest between two statutes should use the complete guide to consumer law in India, which sets both Acts among the sectoral laws that run beside them.

One further preliminary point decides many arguments before they start. Because the 2019 Act repealed and replaced the 1986 Act rather than amending it, a comparison between them is a comparison between a closed system and a living one. The closed system still governs a large stock of pending complaints, because the savings provision and the law of vested appeal rights keep those proceedings under the older rules for important purposes. The living system governs complaints filed after commencement. Any sentence that speaks of the 1986 Act as though it had vanished from practice is wrong, and any sentence that speaks of the 2019 Act as though it governed everything is equally wrong. The transition is itself one of the subjects the frequently asked questions at the end of this article take up.

Which complaints stayed under the older statute after the replacement?

Complaints instituted before the 2019 Act commenced stayed under the 1986 Act by reason of the savings in Section 107, and appeals arising from them carry the appeal conditions of the older statute, because the Supreme Court has treated the right of appeal and its conditions as vested rights that a replacement statute does not enlarge without express words.

That answer is short because the position is direct, and it has a practical consequence that litigants miss at their cost. A business defending a complaint filed in 2019 cannot be required to deposit half the awarded amount without a ceiling merely because the award was delivered after the new statute commenced. The deposit condition attaches to the proceeding, and the proceeding began under the old law. The Supreme Court reached that conclusion by applying the Constitution Bench reasoning in State of Bombay v Supreme General Films Exchange, which holds that a new and more onerous condition on an appeal impairs a substantive right and is not retrospective unless the enactment says so expressly or by necessary intendment. The 2019 Act contains no such statement about its deposit provisions, so the older ceilings govern older complaints. This is the first instance in the comparison of a pattern that recurs: the replacement is more demanding, and its demands are deliberately prospective.

Dimension one: a regulator that can act without a complainant

The single largest structural difference between the two statutes is the presence of a regulator. Under the 1986 Act there was none. The Consumer Protection Councils could meet, resolve and recommend. They could not investigate, they could not order a recall, they could not direct a trader to withdraw an advertisement, and they could not impose a penalty. If a defective product was sold to ten thousand buyers, the statute offered ten thousand individual complaints as its only response, and in practice it offered fewer, because most buyers of a low value product will not litigate over it. The enforcement gap was not a failure of drafting detail. It was a design choice of a statute built around the individual dispute.

Sections 10 to 27 of the 2019 Act build the missing institution. The Central Consumer Protection Authority is established to regulate matters relating to violation of consumer rights, unfair trade practices and false or misleading advertisements that are prejudicial to the interests of the public and consumers. It may inquire or investigate on a complaint, on a reference from the Central Government, or on its own motion. It has an investigation wing headed by a Director General. After investigation it may order recall of goods that are dangerous, hazardous or unsafe, order reimbursement of the price of goods or services recalled, and order discontinuation of practices that are unfair and prejudicial. On misleading advertisements it may direct discontinuation or modification and may impose a penalty on the manufacturer or endorser of up to ten lakh rupees for a first contravention and up to fifty lakh rupees for a subsequent contravention, and it may prohibit an endorser from endorsing any product or service for up to one year, extended to three years for a subsequent contravention. A trader who ignores such directions faces the offences chapter as well.

The dimension is allocated to the consumer, and the reason is not merely that a new power exists. It is that the power changes who bears the cost of enforcement. Under the older statute the cost of policing a misleading claim fell on the person misled, one complaint at a time, in a forum whose monetary jurisdiction might be trivial beside the scale of the campaign. Under the later statute the cost falls on a public authority with power to act for a class of consumers as a class, to file complaints before the commissions on their behalf, and to intervene in pending proceedings. Businesses gained something from the same change, and the gain should be recorded honestly: a single regulator issuing directions is more predictable than thousands of individual complaints producing divergent findings on the same advertisement, and a trader who complies with a direction has a defined obligation rather than an open ended exposure. Predictability, however, is a secondary benefit of a power created for consumers, and it does not transfer the dimension. Dimension one to the consumer.

Which statute created a regulator able to act without any complainant?

The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 created the Central Consumer Protection Authority in Chapter III, with power to investigate on its own motion, order recall of unsafe goods, direct discontinuation of unfair practices and penalise misleading advertisements, none of which any body possessed under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

There is a counter reading that deserves its full strength. A regulator adds a second front for a business that already faces individual complaints, and because the Authority can act on the same facts that ground a complaint, a trader may face a regulatory direction and a compensation claim arising from one course of conduct. Critics of the design, including trade bodies that submitted representations during the bill’s passage, argued that the overlap invites duplication and that the penalty powers over advertisements, exercised by an executive authority rather than a court, concentrate too much in one institution. Defenders, including the Ministry of Consumer Affairs in its statements on the bill, answered that the commissions remain the forum for compensation, that the Authority’s orders are appealable to the National Commission under Section 24, and that a market of India’s scale cannot be policed by individual litigation alone. Both positions are coherent. What neither position disputes is the direction of the change: enforcement stopped depending entirely on the initiative of the person harmed.

Dimension two: the pecuniary test and the measuring rod

No dimension of this comparison is misstated more often, and none matters more in daily practice. Pecuniary jurisdiction decides which of the three tiers hears a complaint, and the two statutes measure it differently at the level of principle.

Under the 1986 Act the measure was composite. Section 11 gave the District Forum jurisdiction where the value of the goods or services and the compensation, if any, claimed did not exceed the statutory limit. Section 17 applied the same composite measure to the State Commission and Section 21 to the National Commission. After the 2002 amendment the limits were twenty lakh rupees for the District Forum, above twenty lakh rupees and up to one crore rupees for the State Commission, and above one crore rupees for the National Commission. Two consequences followed from the composite measure. A complainant could lift a dispute into a higher tier by claiming a larger compensation, and a respondent could attack jurisdiction by attacking the valuation of the claim rather than the substance of the grievance. Jurisdiction litigation, which decides nothing about who was wronged, consumed hearing time in all three tiers.

Under the 2019 Act the measure is single and factual. Sections 34, 47 and 58, as originally enacted, keyed jurisdiction to the value of the goods or services paid as consideration, with the District Commission taking complaints where the consideration did not exceed one crore rupees, the State Commission where it exceeded one crore and did not exceed ten crore rupees, and the National Commission where it exceeded ten crore rupees. The Central Government then exercised its power to prescribe other limits and, by the Consumer Protection (Jurisdiction of the District Commission, the State Commission and the National Commission) Rules, 2021, notified on 30 December 2021, reset the bands to fifty lakh rupees for the District Commission, above fifty lakh rupees and up to two crore rupees for the State Commission, and above two crore rupees for the National Commission. Any account that quotes the one crore and ten crore figures as the operative limits is quoting the enacted text and ignoring the rules, which is the most common error in commentary on this statute. The thresholds in the comparison table at the end of the substantive discussion are the rules thresholds, because those are the thresholds a filing clerk applies. The interaction between these bands and the housing sector, where consideration is high and grievances are numerous, is worked through in the comparison of RERA and consumer remedies for homebuyers, and the sentence to which that link is attached is the right place to see how a jurisdictional rule changes forum choice in a live market.

The composite measure is also gone in substance. Compensation claimed no longer counts. A buyer who paid forty four lakh rupees for a vehicle that caught fire and who claims fifty crore rupees in damages files before the District Commission, because the consideration paid was forty four lakh rupees. That precise configuration reached the Supreme Court in Rutu Mihir Panchal v Union of India, where the heirs of a man who died when his vehicle caught fire challenged the consideration based test as an irrational classification contrary to Article 14, arguing that grave claims were being sent to the lowest tier. The Supreme Court upheld the test. Fixing jurisdiction by consideration paid is a legislative choice about how to distribute work among tiers, it applies uniformly, and the gravity of a claim does not by itself entitle a complainant to choose a higher forum. The decision matters for this comparison because it converts the pecuniary change from a drafting preference into settled constitutional law.

Why does the price paid matter more than the compensation claimed?

Because the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 measures pecuniary jurisdiction by the value of goods or services paid as consideration alone, so the size of the compensation claim cannot lift a complaint into a higher commission, whereas the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 added the compensation claimed to the value of the goods or services for the same purpose.

The dimension is allocated to the business, and the allocation needs defending because consumer organisations have claimed it as a consumer gain on the ground that local filing is convenient. Convenience is real, but it is not what the change principally does. What it principally does is give the respondent certainty about the forum at the moment the transaction closes. A seller knows, from the invoice, which tier any complaint will enter, and can provision, insure and organise its defence accordingly. It cannot be ambushed by a claim figure chosen for forum effect. That is a genuine and significant business gain, and it is the only dimension in the table that the business wins outright. The consumer side of the ledger is equally real and must not be edited out: a person who paid a small sum and suffered a large loss is confined to the District Commission however complex the evidence, which some regard as appropriate proximity between forum and citizen and others regard as a mismatch between the level of the forum and the difficulty of the claim. Both descriptions are accurate. They describe the same rule from opposite ends, and the rule favours the party who values certainty over the party who values choice of forum. Businesses value certainty in this setting more than complainants do. Dimension two to the business.

Dimension three: where a complaint may be filed

Territorial jurisdiction under the 1986 Act followed the defendant and the cause of action. Section 11(2) permitted a complaint where the opposite party actually and voluntarily resided, carried on business, had a branch office or personally worked for gain, where there were several opposite parties subject to conditions, or where the cause of action arose wholly or in part. A consumer who bought a defective appliance from a national retailer and moved to another state faced a filing decision driven by the retailer’s geography, not by the consumer’s. In an economy of local shops that rule was tolerable. In an economy of national supply chains, distance selling and services delivered across state lines, it placed the burden of distance on the party least able to bear it.

Section 34(2) of the 2019 Act retains every one of those grounds and adds one: a complaint may be instituted in a District Commission within whose jurisdiction the complainant resides or personally works for gain. Section 47 and Section 58 build the State and National tiers on the same scheme. The addition is small in words and large in effect. It converts the consumer’s home district into a competent forum, which means the evidentiary centre of most consumer disputes, the buyer’s records, the local service history, the witnesses to a failed delivery, sits in the place where the hearing happens. It also changes settlement dynamics, because a respondent can no longer rely on distance to discount the value of a claim.

The same chapter adds filing mechanics that the older statute never contemplated. A complaint may be filed electronically, hearings may be held through video conferencing, and the procedure chapter imposes admission discipline, including a decision on admissibility within twenty one days, after which a complaint is deemed admitted if the question is not decided within that period. Each of these is a friction reducer rather than a new right, and friction is where consumer litigation is actually lost. A right that costs a day of travel to exercise is a right with a price attached, and the price is regressive.

Electronic commerce sharpens the point. A buyer dealing with a platform has no meaningful sense of where the opposite party resides, and a territorial rule built on the seller’s residence would leave the buyer investigating corporate geography before filing anything. The complainant’s residence ground dissolves that problem at a stroke.

The dimension is allocated to the consumer without difficulty. Nothing in the change assists a respondent, and the one argument available to the other side, that complainant side filing invites forum shopping, is weak on the facts because the complainant’s residence is a fixed and verifiable connecting factor, not a choice manufactured for litigation. Dimension three to the consumer.

Dimension four: forum structure, composition and appointments

Here the two statutes look most alike and the resemblance is the finding. The 1986 Act created a District Forum presided over by a person qualified to be a District Judge, a State Commission presided over by a person who was or had been a Judge of a High Court, and a National Commission presided over by a person who was or had been a Judge of the Supreme Court, each sitting with members drawn from fields including economics, law, commerce, accountancy, industry, public affairs and administration, with a statutory requirement that at least one member be a woman. The 2019 Act keeps the ladder, keeps the judicial presidency at each tier, keeps the mixed membership and raises the minimum strength of a State Commission to a President and not less than four members. It renames the District Forum a District Commission, gives each commission a power to review its own orders for error apparent, which the District Forum never had, and gives the State and National Commissions transfer and administrative powers in a more articulated form.

What changed is the route by which members arrive. Under the older statute selection committees and qualifications were prescribed, and appointments were a recurring source of litigation about vacancies rather than about standards. Under the later statute the Central Government made the Consumer Protection (Qualification for Appointment, Method of Recruitment, Procedure of Appointment, Term of Office, Resignation and Removal of the President and Members of the State Commission and District Commission) Rules, 2020, which prescribed twenty years of experience for State Commission membership and fifteen years for District Commission membership, and allowed a selection committee to dispense with a written examination. The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court struck down Rules 3(2)(b), 4(2)(c) and 6(9) as arbitrary and contrary to Article 14, relying on State of Uttar Pradesh v All Uttar Pradesh Consumer Protection Bar Association and on Madras Bar Association v Union of India. The Supreme Court upheld that conclusion in Secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs v Dr Mahindra Bhaskar Limaye, decided on 3 March 2023, holding that persons with a bachelor’s degree and ten years of professional experience in the relevant fields are eligible, and directing that selection proceed by written examination and viva voce until a fresh framework is enacted. A later review petition was dismissed.

This dimension is allocated to neither side. The structure a litigant meets is materially the same structure, and the contested ground, who appoints and on what criteria, is a question about the independence of the commissions that affects consumers and businesses symmetrically. A commission staffed by members selected without examination and on long experience thresholds set by the executive is a risk to both parties equally, and a commission staffed transparently benefits both equally. The honest entry in the verdict column is neither, and forcing it to either side would falsify the count. Dimension four to neither.

Dimension five: reliefs, and the arrival of the unfair contract

The reliefs list is where continuity is most visible. Section 14 of the 1986 Act empowered a forum, on finding a defect or deficiency, to direct removal of the defect, replacement of the goods, refund of the price, compensation for loss or injury including mental agony, discontinuance of an unfair or restrictive trade practice, withdrawal of hazardous goods, cessation of manufacture of hazardous goods, and costs. Section 39 of the 2019 Act reproduces that family of directions and extends it, adding directions connected with product liability, the withdrawal of dangerous goods and services, and corrective advertising in the wider scheme. A reader comparing the two lists line by line will find development, not rupture.

Two additions change the character of the relief jurisdiction. The first is the unfair contract. Section 2(46) of the 2019 Act defines an unfair contract as a contract between a manufacturer, trader or service provider and a consumer having terms that cause a significant change in the rights of the consumer, and it lists the species: manifestly excessive security deposits, disproportionate penalties for breach, refusal to accept early repayment of a debt, a unilateral right to terminate without reasonable cause, assignment to the detriment of the consumer without consent, and unreasonable charges or conditions that put the consumer at a disadvantage. Section 49(2) empowers the State Commission to declare such a term null and void, and Section 47(1)(a)(ii) gives it original jurisdiction over complaints against unfair contracts where the consideration does not exceed the State band, while Section 59(2) and Section 58 give the corresponding power and jurisdiction to the National Commission. The District Commission has no such power. Under the 1986 Act there was no statutory route to strike a contract term as unfair. A commission could find a deficiency in service, and courts could decline to enforce an oppressive term on general principles, but the term itself stood until a party litigated it on ordinary contract doctrine, which individual consumers rarely do.

The second addition is the breadth of who may complain and for how many. Both statutes allow complaints by a consumer, a registered voluntary consumer association, the Central or State Government and, under the later Act, the Central Authority, and both allow one or more consumers to complain on behalf of numerous consumers having the same interest with the commission’s permission. The later Act makes the class style complaint a more usable instrument by pairing it with a regulator that can itself file and intervene.

The dimension is allocated to the consumer. The unfair contract power is a new substantive weapon aimed at drafted terms, and drafted terms are by definition the business’s text. A business gains drafting certainty in the long run, because a declared list of unfair species tells it what not to write, but the immediate legal effect is a power in two commissions to annul its words at a consumer’s instance. Dimension five to the consumer.

Dimension six: product liability as a cause of action

Under the 1986 Act there was no product liability action. A person harmed by a defective product had to frame the case as a defect in goods or a deficiency in service and claim compensation under Section 14, or sue in tort or contract in a civil court, or invoke the law on hazardous goods at the margins. The statute contained no allocation of liability among manufacturer, service provider and seller, no catalogue of the defects that attract liability, and no exceptions tailored to products. For a statute whose most serious cases involve death and injury from things that burn, explode, collapse or contaminate, that absence was the largest substantive gap in the scheme.

Chapter VI of the 2019 Act, Sections 82 to 87, fills it. Section 82 applies the chapter to every claim for compensation under the Act on account of harm caused by a defective product or deficiency of a product service. Section 83 makes a product manufacturer, a product service provider and a product seller liable in a product liability action. Section 84 fixes manufacturer liability where the product contains a manufacturing defect, is defective in design, deviates from manufacturing specifications, does not conform to an express warranty, or fails to contain adequate instructions for correct usage or warnings about improper usage. Section 85 addresses the product service provider, Section 86 the product seller who is not the manufacturer, including a seller that exercised substantial control over design or labelling, altered the product, made its own express warranty, or cannot identify the manufacturer. Section 87 states exceptions, including misuse, alteration or modification by the consumer, failure to follow warnings, and the position of an employer or a seller dealing in a product whose danger is obvious or commonly understood. Harm is defined to include personal injury, illness and death, damage to property other than the product itself, and mental agony or emotional distress attendant on injury, illness or damage.

The allocation is to the consumer, but with a qualification that keeps the verdict honest. Product liability under the 2019 Act is not strict in the unqualified sense, and it is not a no fault compensation scheme. A claimant must still prove a defect within the statutory catalogue and a causal link to harm, and the exceptions in Section 87 give a defendant real defences. What the claimant gains is a defined action with defined defendants and defined heads, instead of an improvisation across three bodies of law. Businesses gain the mirror image benefit of a defined exposure: the catalogue tells a manufacturer exactly which failures attract liability, and a seller that neither altered the product nor warranted it and can identify the manufacturer has a route out. Defined exposure is worth money to an insurer. It does not outweigh the creation of the action itself. Dimension six to the consumer.

Dimension seven: statutory mediation

The 1986 Act contained no mediation mechanism. Settlement happened, as it happens in every adjudicatory system, by negotiation in the corridor, by compromise recorded in an order, or through Lok Adalats organised under the legal services framework, but the statute itself offered no route out of adjudication and no institution charged with producing agreement. Every dispute that entered the system was processed as a contest, including the large proportion of consumer disputes in which the parties disagree about a modest sum and would both prefer a quick figure to a slow victory.

Chapter V of the 2019 Act, Sections 74 to 81, creates the missing route inside the statute. Every commission is to have a mediation cell attached to it, with a panel of empanelled mediators, and the cell maintains lists of cases settled and cases in which settlement failed. Section 79 prescribes the procedure, Section 80 provides that a settlement recorded through mediation is placed before the commission, which passes an appropriate order recording the settlement within seven days, there is no appeal against an order passed on a mediated settlement in the District tier by reason of the third proviso to Section 41, and where mediation fails the commission resumes and decides the complaint. Reference to mediation requires the consent of the parties; it is not a compulsory diversion.

The dimension is allocated to neither side, deliberately. Mediation is not a consumer weapon or a business concession. It is a shared exit from a slow corridor, and its value accrues to whichever party would have suffered more from delay, which varies by case. In a claim for a refund of a small sum the consumer gains more, because delay erodes a small claim to nothing. In a high value claim with a strong defence the business gains more, because a settlement caps exposure and avoids a reasoned order that other complainants can cite. Averaged across the docket, neither side owns it. What can be said, with attribution, is that its practical reach depends on cells being constituted and staffed and on parties being willing, and commentators on the Act’s working, including the parliamentary and academic commentary that followed commencement, have recorded that mediation cells were constituted unevenly across districts and that referral rates depend heavily on the presiding member’s practice. A statutory door that is not opened in a district is a provision on paper in that district. Dimension seven to neither.

Dimension eight: electronic commerce inside the statute

The 1986 Act was drafted for a market of shops, dealers, manufacturers and local service providers. It contains no definition of electronic commerce, no duty addressed to a marketplace, and no rule about a seller who has no premises a consumer can visit. Its definitions of goods, service, trader and unfair trade practice were wide enough to catch many online transactions in principle, and commissions did entertain complaints about online sales, but the fit was achieved by interpretation rather than by design, and the questions that dominate online disputes, who is responsible when a platform lists a third party seller, what must be disclosed before purchase, how a grievance is acknowledged, had no statutory answers.

The 2019 Act answers them in layers. Section 2(16) defines e-commerce as buying or selling of goods or services, including digital products, over a digital or electronic network. Section 2(17) defines an electronic service provider. The definition of unfair trade practice in Section 2(47) reaches conduct in electronic commerce, and Section 94 empowers the Central Government to take measures to prevent unfair trade practices in e-commerce and direct selling for protecting the interests and rights of consumers. Under that power the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 were made, imposing duties on e-commerce entities and on sellers on marketplaces: display of the seller’s details and the total price with a breakup, information on return, refund, exchange, warranty, delivery, payment methods and grievance redressal, a grievance officer who must acknowledge a complaint within forty eight hours and redress it within one month, a prohibition on unfair price manipulation and on discriminatory classification of consumers, and duties on sellers to give accurate descriptions and to honour warranties. The Central Authority’s remit extends to these practices, so an online deception can attract regulatory action and not merely an individual complaint.

The dimension is allocated to the consumer. The reason is asymmetry of information. A platform knows the identity of its sellers, the pattern of complaints against them and the terms on which goods are listed; a buyer knows none of that. Duties of disclosure, grievance acknowledgement within a fixed time and identification of the seller transfer information from the party that holds it to the party that needs it. Platforms gained a compliance burden and also a benefit that should be recorded: a single national rulebook replaced the risk of divergent state level responses, and honest platforms gain when fraudulent sellers become easier to remove. Those are real gains, but they are gains from regulation of a market, not gains against the consumer, and they do not move the allocation. Dimension eight to the consumer.

Dimension nine: appeals, deposits and time

The appellate ladder is the same ladder in both statutes: District to State, State to National, National to the Supreme Court, with revisional jurisdiction in the higher commissions and a power in the Supreme Court to condone delay for sufficient cause. What changed is the price of climbing it and, at the first step, the time allowed.

Under the 1986 Act an appeal from the District Forum to the State Commission lay within thirty days under Section 15, from the State Commission to the National Commission within thirty days under Section 19, and from the National Commission to the Supreme Court within thirty days under Section 23. A person required to pay an amount under the order appealed against had to deposit fifty per cent of that amount or a fixed sum, whichever was less: twenty five thousand rupees at the first step, thirty five thousand rupees at the second, and fifty thousand rupees at the third. The fixed sums were set when awards were smaller and they were never revised upward in step with award inflation. By the last decade of the Act’s life the deposit at the first appellate step was, for any substantial award, twenty five thousand rupees regardless of whether the award was three lakh rupees or three crore rupees. The deposit had ceased to function as a filter and had become a formality.

Under the 2019 Act, Section 41 gives forty five days for an appeal from the District Commission to the State Commission, Section 51 gives thirty days for an appeal from the State Commission to the National Commission, with a second appeal on a substantial question of law contemplated by the scheme, and Section 67 gives thirty days for an appeal from the National Commission to the Supreme Court in cases within its original jurisdiction. Each of Sections 41, 51 and 67 requires a person who is required to pay an amount under the order to deposit fifty per cent of that amount before the appeal is entertained. There is no fixed sum and no ceiling. Fifty per cent of a two crore rupee award is one crore rupees, and it must be found before the appeal is heard at all.

The dimension is allocated to the consumer, and it is the dimension businesses feel most directly. Its effect is to make a favourable order substantially more valuable, because the losing party must fund half of it to challenge it, which changes the economics of appealing as a delaying device. Under the older regime an appeal could be bought for a trivial deposit and the consumer’s award could be frozen in appellate time for years at negligible cost to the appellant. Under the later regime delay has a price that scales with the award. The counter argument is genuine and is made by business associations and by practitioners who act for respondents: a meritorious appellant with a strong defence and a weak balance sheet may be shut out of an appeal by a deposit it cannot raise, and access to an appellate forum conditioned on payment is a burden that falls on the honest and the dishonest alike. The Supreme Court’s vested rights reasoning on pre commencement complaints shows the same sensitivity in another form. On balance the allocation stands, because the deposit is refundable in the event of success and is credited against the amount payable, whereas the consumer’s loss from a costless appeal was permanent in the form of time. Dimension nine to the consumer.

What stayed the same about limitation and the commercial purpose bar?

The two year limitation period from the accrual of the cause of action, with power to condone delay for sufficient cause on recorded reasons, and the exclusion of a person who obtains goods or services for resale or for a commercial purpose, subject to the explanation protecting a person who uses goods exclusively to earn a livelihood by self employment.

Those two continuities are not footnotes. They are the provisions that decide whether a complaint survives its first hearing, and the replacement left both of them in place in materially identical language: Section 24A of the 1986 Act became Section 69 of the 2019 Act, and the consumer definition in Section 2(1)(d) of the 1986 Act became Section 2(7) of the 2019 Act with the same exclusion and the same explanation. The consequence is that the case law built on the older words continues to govern. In Laxmi Engineering Works v P.S.G. Industrial Institute the Supreme Court held that whether a purchase is for a commercial purpose is a question of fact in each case, and that a person who buys goods and uses them exclusively to earn a livelihood by means of self employment is a consumer. In Indian Medical Association v V.P. Shantha the Supreme Court held that services rendered by medical practitioners fall within the definition of service, with the distinctions drawn there between free services, services paid for by an insurer or an employer, and services in government hospitals where charges are nominal. Both decisions were delivered under the 1986 Act, both turn on words the 2019 Act reproduced, and both continue to be applied. A litigant who assumes that a new statute wiped the slate clean on who counts as a consumer will lose an argument that was lost in 1995.

Dimension ten: enforcement of an order

An order that cannot be enforced is a recommendation. The 1986 Act enforced its orders through two provisions. Section 25, as substituted by the 2002 amendment, provided for attachment and sale of property where an interim order was not complied with, and for recovery of money due under an order by certificate to the Collector, who was to recover it as arrears of land revenue. Section 27 made failure to comply with an order punishable with imprisonment for a term not less than one month and up to three years, or a fine of not less than two thousand rupees and up to ten thousand rupees, or both, with a proviso permitting lesser punishment for adequate and special reasons. The land revenue route was slow, the fine ceiling was trivial by the time the Act was repealed, and the attachment limb was tied to interim orders in the substituted text, which produced an awkward gap for final non monetary directions that commentators noted and courts worked around.

The 2019 Act separates execution from punishment more cleanly. Section 71 provides that every order of a District, State or National Commission shall be enforced by that commission in the same manner as if it were a decree made by a court in a suit, and that where a commission cannot execute its own order it may send it to the court within whose jurisdiction the person resides, carries on business or personally works for gain, or where the property is situated. Section 72 provides that a person who fails to comply with an order shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term not less than one month and up to three years, or a fine of not less than twenty five thousand rupees and up to one lakh rupees, or both. The fine ceiling rose tenfold, and the decree route gives the successful party the ordinary machinery of execution, including attachment and sale under the civil procedure framework, rather than dependence on a revenue recovery certificate.

The dimension is allocated to the consumer, with a modest margin. Enforcement rights are formally symmetrical, because a business that wins costs or a dismissal with costs may also execute, but in practice the enforcing party in consumer litigation is overwhelmingly the successful complainant holding an award against a trader who has not paid. Raising the penalty ceiling and supplying decree execution strengthens the hand of the party holding the order. It does not solve the underlying problem, which is that execution takes time and that an impecunious respondent cannot pay at any level of penalty. Dimension ten to the consumer.

Ten dimensions, two statutes, one verdict column

The table below is the artifact on which the conclusion of this article rests. Each row states the position under the earlier statute, the position under the later statute, and an allocation. The allocation is the judgment of this article, reached on the reasons given in the ten sections above, and a reader who disagrees with an allocation can re-derive a different conclusion from the same table, which is precisely what a comparison table should allow.

Dimension	Consumer Protection Act, 1986	Consumer Protection Act, 2019	Verdict
Regulator	No regulator. Advisory Consumer Protection Councils only, with no power to investigate, recall or penalise	Central Consumer Protection Authority under Sections 10 to 27, with investigation, recall, reimbursement and advertisement penalty powers	Consumer
Pecuniary jurisdiction	Value of goods or services plus compensation claimed. District Forum up to twenty lakh rupees, State Commission up to one crore rupees, National Commission above one crore rupees, as settled by the 2002 amendment	Value of goods or services paid as consideration alone. District Commission up to fifty lakh rupees, State Commission up to two crore rupees, National Commission above two crore rupees, under the Jurisdiction Rules of 2021	Business
Territorial filing	Where the opposite party resided or carried on business, or where the cause of action arose, under Section 11(2)	Those grounds retained, plus the place where the complainant resides or personally works for gain, under Section 34(2)	Consumer
Forum structure and appointments	Three tiers, judicial presidents, mixed membership, selection by prescribed committees	Three tiers retained with judicial presidents and larger State Commissions, review power added, appointment rules of 2020 partly struck down and ten years of experience restored by the Supreme Court	Neither
Reliefs and unfair contracts	Reliefs listed in Section 14. No statutory power to strike down a contract term as unfair	Reliefs expanded in Section 39. State and National Commissions may declare unfair contract terms null and void under Sections 49(2) and 59(2)	Consumer
Product liability	No product liability action. Harm had to be framed as defect, deficiency, tort or contract	Chapter VI, Sections 82 to 87, fixes liability on manufacturers, product service providers and product sellers, with stated exceptions	Consumer
Mediation	No statutory mediation mechanism inside the Act	Chapter V, Sections 74 to 81, creates mediation cells attached to the commissions, with settlement recorded as an order	Neither
Electronic commerce	No definition, no duties for platforms or online sellers	E-commerce defined in Section 2(16), measures under Section 94, duties imposed by the E-Commerce Rules of 2020, grievance acknowledgement within forty eight hours	Consumer
Appeals, deposits and time	Thirty days at each step. Deposit of fifty per cent or twenty five thousand, thirty five thousand or fifty thousand rupees, whichever was less	Forty five days from District to State, thirty days at the higher steps. Deposit of fifty per cent of the amount ordered, with no ceiling, under Sections 41, 51 and 67	Consumer
Enforcement	Attachment for interim orders and recovery as arrears of land revenue under Section 25. Penalty fine up to ten thousand rupees under Section 27	Enforcement as a decree of a court under Section 71. Penalty fine up to one lakh rupees under Section 72	Consumer

The count is seven dimensions to the consumer, one dimension to the business, and two dimensions to neither. That count, and not any general impression of modernisation, is the verdict. The replacement improved the position of consumers substantially and improved the position of businesses in one respect that matters commercially, the certainty of the forum, while leaving the structure of adjudication and the availability of a consensual exit shared between them.

What the count means, and the deciding factor

A count alone can mislead if the dimensions are not of equal weight, so the weight must be addressed directly. The deciding factor in this comparison is that the 1986 Act created a cause of action and a forum, while the 2019 Act created a cause of action, a forum and an authority. Everything else is subsidiary to that. A regulator that can investigate a misleading advertisement reaching millions of people, order a recall of an unsafe product without waiting for a victim to file, and impose a penalty on an endorser alters the balance of the market itself, not merely the outcome of individual disputes. Product liability is the second structural addition, because it converts the most serious category of consumer harm from an improvisation into a defined claim. Against those two, the business gain on pecuniary jurisdiction is a gain in predictability, valuable and real, but predictable exposure to a stronger claim is not the same as a stronger position.

This is also the answer to the objection that the verdict is one sided. It is one sided in the count because the statute was designed to be one sided in its additions: Parliament in 2019 was legislating to strengthen consumer protection, and a comparison that manufactured a balance the statute does not contain would be less accurate than one that reports the imbalance and identifies the single dimension running the other way. The business case is not that the 2019 Act helped businesses more. It is that the 2019 Act helped businesses differently, by giving certainty about forum, a defined catalogue of product defects, a defined list of unfair contract species, a single national rulebook for electronic commerce and a mediation route that caps exposure. Certainty is a genuine commercial asset, and a well advised business would rather operate under the 2019 Act with its heavier obligations than under the 1986 Act with its unpredictability about forum and its silence about online trade. That is a conclusion about drafting quality, not about whose interests the statute serves.

What did not change, and why that list is as important as the other one

The closing section of a comparison of these two statutes has to list the continuities, because most accounts omit them and the omissions cause litigation errors.

The three tier structure survived. A District Commission, a State Commission and a National Commission, with original jurisdiction distributed by value, appellate jurisdiction upward and revisional jurisdiction in the two higher tiers, is the 1986 design carried into 2019 with new names and modest enlargements.

The definition of a consumer survived. Section 2(7) of the 2019 Act reproduces the substance of Section 2(1)(d) of the 1986 Act: a person who buys goods or hires or avails services for consideration, including a beneficiary user with the buyer’s approval, excluding a person who obtains goods for resale or for a commercial purpose, with the explanation that commercial purpose does not include use of goods bought and used exclusively for earning a livelihood by means of self employment. The same architecture appears for services. Every argument about a self employed purchaser, a charitable trust buying flats, a company buying vehicles for its directors or a patient paying a hospital is an argument on words that did not change.

The limitation period survived. Two years from the date on which the cause of action arose, with power to admit a later complaint where the complainant satisfies the commission that there was sufficient cause, and with reasons for condonation to be recorded: Section 24A became Section 69 with its substance intact.

The additional remedies principle survived. Section 3 of the 1986 Act provided that its provisions were in addition to and not in derogation of any other law. Section 100 of the 2019 Act repeats it. Concurrent remedies therefore remain available, and a homebuyer, an insurance policyholder or a patient may still choose between a consumer commission and a sectoral or special forum where the special law permits, subject to the election and bar rules that the special statutes themselves contain.

The reliefs core survived. Removal of defects, replacement, refund, compensation for loss and injury, discontinuance of unfair trade practices, withdrawal of hazardous goods and costs were the heart of Section 14 and remain the heart of Section 39.

The finality principle survived. An order against which no appeal is filed is final, and the appellate route is the exclusive route for correction, subject to the review powers the later Act added and to the constitutional writ jurisdiction that no statute of this kind excludes.

A reader who absorbs only the differences will misadvise a client on the questions that arise most frequently, because the questions that arise most frequently are the commercial purpose question and the limitation question, and on both of those the answer in 2019 is the answer that was given in 1986.

The delay question, stated with evidence rather than assertion

Delay was the principal criticism of the older regime, and any honest verdict must say what the replacement did about it. The causes most often identified are three: vacancies in the commissions, which leave benches unconstituted for long stretches; the volume of cases relative to the number of benches; and the absence of a consequence that bites when a commission exceeds the statutory expectation of expeditious disposal. The 2019 Act addressed none of those three causes directly. It set timelines for stages, including admission within twenty one days, service of notice and filing of the version of the opposite party within defined periods, and an endeavour to decide complaints within three months where no analysis or testing of goods is required and five months where it is, carried over in substance from the older procedure. An endeavour clause is not a sanction. It did not create a mechanism to fill vacancies, and the vacancy problem persisted into the new regime to a degree that the Supreme Court took up the condition of the commissions in proceedings concerning inaction in appointments and inadequate infrastructure across the states, issuing directions for the filling of posts and the provision of facilities. The appointment litigation described in dimension four is part of that same story: rules struck down in 2021 and 2023 meant selection processes had to be restarted, and benches sat short in the interval.

It follows that the claim that the 2019 Act reduced delay is not a claim the evidence supports in general form, and the claim that it made delay worse is equally unsupported. What the Act did was add routes around adjudication for cases that settle, in the form of mediation, and add a regulator able to dispose of a class of grievances without adjudication at all, in the form of the Authority’s directions on advertisements and recalls. Those are bypasses, not repairs. A system whose main road is congested benefits from bypasses, and the benefit is real, but describing a bypass as a repair misdescribes it and sets an expectation the statute cannot meet. Practitioners quoted in commentary on the Act’s first years divide on the point in a predictable way: consumer associations emphasise that the obligation to decide admissibility quickly and the complainant side filing rule have shortened the early stages of a case, while respondent side practitioners emphasise that disposal of the contested hearing stage is governed by bench strength and has not materially altered. Both observations can be true at once, because they describe different stages of the same proceeding.

Verdict for a complainant with a pending or a fresh grievance

A complainant whose complaint was filed before the 2019 Act commenced remains in the older system and should not expect the new tools. The complaint proceeds before the commission seized of it under the 1986 Act’s procedure, the pecuniary band that governed at filing continues to govern, and if an award is made and the respondent appeals, the deposit the respondent must make is the older capped deposit. The complainant’s practical advantages in that world are the accumulated case law, a mature body of precedent on deficiency and defect, and forums whose practices are settled. The disadvantages are the absence of a product liability chapter, the absence of a regulator to pursue a parallel grievance about the same conduct, and the older territorial rule if the case has to be refiled for any reason.

A complainant filing a fresh grievance is better placed in every dimension that the table allocates to the consumer, and should use the additions deliberately rather than treating the complaint as an old style filing with new letterhead. File where the complainant resides if that is the convenient forum, and say so in the complaint by pleading the residence ground. Plead the consideration paid precisely, because that figure alone fixes the tier, and attach the invoice or agreement that proves it. Where a drafted term is the source of the loss, plead the term as an unfair contract term and take the complaint to the State or National Commission, because the District Commission cannot declare a term void. Where the harm is injury or property damage from a product, plead the product liability chapter and identify which defendant is a manufacturer, which a product service provider and which a product seller, because the liability provisions differ for each. Where the grievance is about a misleading advertisement or an unsafe product affecting many buyers, complain to the Central Authority as well, because its directions can stop the practice while the individual claim proceeds. Consider mediation where the amount is modest and speed matters more than precedent. Readers who need the filing mechanics in sequence, the documents to assemble and the fees, should follow the guide to filing a consumer complaint in India rather than improvising them, and should treat the general information in this article as information about the law and not as advice on an individual dispute.

Verdict for a business assessing compliance exposure

A business reading this comparison for exposure should begin with the dimension it won and then move to the ones it lost. Forum certainty is a real asset: the invoice value decides the tier, there is no tactical inflation of a claim figure to reach a higher forum, and provisioning for consumer litigation can be modelled on transaction values that the business already records. That asset is worth having and it is the only structural improvement the statute delivered to the respondent side.

The exposures are of four kinds. Regulatory exposure is new and does not depend on being sued: an advertisement can be investigated, a direction can be issued, a penalty of up to ten lakh rupees for a first contravention and fifty lakh rupees for a subsequent one can be imposed on a manufacturer or endorser, and an endorser can be barred from endorsing for up to one year or three years. Criminal exposure for false or misleading advertisements sits behind that in Section 89, with imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of up to ten lakh rupees for a first offence, rising for a subsequent offence. Drafted terms exposure is new: a term that imposes a manifestly excessive security deposit, a disproportionate penalty or a unilateral termination right can be declared void by a State or National Commission, which means the term fails at the moment it is needed. Product exposure is newly codified: manufacturing defect, design defect, deviation from specifications, breach of express warranty and inadequate warnings are five distinct routes to liability, and the warnings route is the one most often neglected in practice because it is the cheapest to fix. Appeal exposure is financial rather than legal: half the amount ordered must be deposited to appeal, without a ceiling, so the decision to appeal a large award is a treasury decision and not merely a legal one.

The practical response is documentary. Businesses that keep complete transaction records, version controlled copies of their standard terms, the substantiation file behind every advertising claim, and the instructions and warnings supplied with each product are businesses that can answer a regulator and a commission from their own files. The discipline is the same discipline that protects any organisation whose public statements may later be tested against its records, and it is described in general terms in guidance on protecting source material and documentary records, which a compliance team can read for the record keeping principle rather than for its subject matter. What does not work is treating the 2019 Act as a relabelling of the 1986 Act and leaving standard terms, advertisement clearance and complaint handling where they were. The statute changed the institutions around the business even where it left the definition of its obligations recognisably the same.

Misleading advertisements as a separate battleground

Advertisements deserve a section of their own because the contrast between the statutes is sharpest there and because the subject is where the regulator’s creation bites hardest. Under the 1986 Act a misleading advertisement was actionable only as an unfair trade practice within a complaint. Section 2(1)(r) defined unfair trade practice to include false representation that goods are of a particular standard, quality or grade, false representation about sponsorship or approval, and a warranty or guarantee that is materially misleading or unsupported by adequate tests. A complainant who proved the practice could obtain an order directing the party to discontinue it and could obtain compensation for loss suffered. That was the whole apparatus. There was no power in any authority to order an advertisement withdrawn from circulation across the country, no penalty calibrated to the scale of a campaign, and no consequence at all for the celebrity or expert who lent a face to the claim. The remedy was proportioned to a single complainant’s loss while the conduct was proportioned to a national audience, and the mismatch was visible to everyone who practised in the field.

The 2019 Act attacks the mismatch at three levels. At the regulatory level, Section 21 empowers the Central Authority, after investigation, to direct a trader, manufacturer, endorser, advertiser or publisher to discontinue or modify a false or misleading advertisement, to impose a penalty of up to ten lakh rupees for a first contravention and up to fifty lakh rupees for a subsequent contravention on a manufacturer or endorser, and to prohibit an endorser from making an endorsement for up to one year, or up to three years for a subsequent contravention. An endorser has a defence of due diligence, and a publisher has protection where the advertisement was published in the ordinary course of business with the qualifications the section states. At the penal level, Chapter VII separates the offences. Section 88 punishes failure to comply with directions of the Central Authority. Section 89 punishes a false or misleading advertisement with imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of up to ten lakh rupees, rising to imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of up to fifty lakh rupees for a subsequent conviction. Section 90 punishes dealing in products containing an adulterant and Section 91 punishes dealing in spurious goods, and both grade the punishment by the injury caused, rising through injury, grievous hurt and death to the severest terms the chapter provides. At the individual level, the misleading advertisement remains a ground of complaint before the commissions, and the definition of unfair trade practice in Section 2(47) preserves the older categories while extending them.

A business should notice the ordering of those levels. Regulatory action does not require proof of any individual’s loss, so the evidentiary burden that defeated advertisement complaints under the old regime, namely that a particular buyer relied on a particular claim, is not the burden the Authority carries. That single shift explains why advertisement compliance changed from a marketing judgement into a legal function inside most large advertisers after commencement, and why the substantiation file behind a claim became a document that legal departments ask for before a campaign runs rather than after a complaint arrives.

Three worked illustrations of the same grievance under both statutes

Abstract dimensions become clearer when one grievance is run through both systems. Take first a buyer who paid forty four lakh rupees for a sports utility vehicle that caught fire, destroying the vehicle and injuring the buyer, and whose heirs or whose own claim values the loss at many times the price. Under the 1986 Act the forum was decided by adding the value of the goods to the compensation claimed, so a claim framed at above one crore rupees went to the National Commission, and the case was argued as a defect in goods with compensation under Section 14. Under the 2019 Act the same facts go to the District Commission because the consideration paid was forty four lakh rupees, the claim is pleaded under the product liability chapter against the manufacturer on the grounds of manufacturing defect or design defect or inadequate warning, and the size of the compensation claimed has no effect on where the case is heard. That is the configuration the Supreme Court considered in the Panchal litigation, and it is the clearest single illustration of the pecuniary change cutting against the complainant’s forum preference while giving the complainant a better cause of action in the forum reached.

Take second a homebuyer who paid ninety lakh rupees for a flat, faced a delay of several years in delivery, and was offered possession with a penalty clause in the builder’s standard agreement limiting compensation to a nominal monthly sum while the same agreement allowed the builder to charge penal interest for a short delay in payment. Under the 1986 Act the complaint lay before the State Commission on the composite measure if the compensation claimed carried the total above twenty lakh rupees, and the penalty clause was attacked indirectly as part of the deficiency in service. Under the 2019 Act the complaint lies before the State Commission because the consideration paid exceeds fifty lakh rupees and does not exceed two crore rupees, and the penalty clause can be attacked directly as a term imposing a disproportionate penalty and an unreasonable charge, with a request that the State Commission declare it null and void. The homebuyer also retains the choice of the remedy under the real estate statute, because Section 100 preserves other laws, and that election is a strategic decision the complaint should record.

Take third a consumer who bought a health supplement online after an endorsement by a well known sportsperson, relying on a claim that the product would produce a stated result, and who suffered no physical injury but lost the price and was misled. Under the 1986 Act the practical remedy was a complaint for the price against the seller, and the endorsement was legally irrelevant. Under the 2019 Act the consumer may complain to the Central Authority, which may investigate the advertisement, direct its discontinuation, penalise the manufacturer and the endorser subject to the due diligence defence, and the consumer may also complain about the marketplace’s own duties under the e-commerce rules if the seller’s identity or the product particulars were not displayed as required. The grievance is identical. The number of legal levers available to answer it is not.

Statements about the replacement that do not survive checking

Comparison articles attract a standard set of errors, and naming them is part of the value of this one. The first error is to quote the pecuniary limits enacted in 2019, one crore rupees, ten crore rupees and above ten crore rupees, as though they were the operative limits. They were operative from commencement until the Jurisdiction Rules of 2021 replaced them with fifty lakh rupees, two crore rupees and above two crore rupees. An answer that gives the enacted figures without the rules is an answer about a statute that governed for seventeen months.

The second error is to say that the 2019 Act abolished the commercial purpose exclusion or widened the definition of a consumer to cover business purchases. It did neither. The exclusion and the self employment explanation were reproduced, and the case law on them continues to apply, which is why the trust, company and professional purchaser cases decided under the earlier statute are still cited in argument under the later one.

The third error is to say that the 2019 Act removed the need to prove anything in a product liability claim and made manufacturers insurers of every accident involving their products. Chapter VI requires a defect within the statutory catalogue and harm caused by it, and Section 87 sets out exceptions that include alteration and misuse by the consumer. The change is the creation of a defined action, not the abolition of proof.

The fourth error is to assert that delay has been cured. No official series supports a general claim of that kind, the vacancy and bench strength causes were not addressed by the statute, and the Supreme Court’s own engagement with appointments and infrastructure in the new regime points the other way. Delay should be described with the attribution used in the delay section of this article.

The fifth error is to describe the appeal deposit as fifty per cent subject to a maximum. That was the 1986 position in the form of a fixed sum whichever was less. Under Sections 41, 51 and 67 of the 2019 Act there is no maximum, and the omission is the point of the provision.

The sixth error is to treat the Central Authority as an appellate or compensating body. It is neither. It investigates, directs, recalls and penalises, it may file complaints and intervene, and appeals from its orders lie to the National Commission under Section 24, but compensation for an individual’s loss remains the business of the commissions.

The transition in detail, because pending cases are not a footnote

Repeal and replacement create a boundary, and boundaries in litigation are where money is lost on procedure. Section 107 of the 2019 Act repeals the 1986 Act and provides that the repeal shall not affect the previous operation of the repealed Act or anything duly done under it, rights, privileges, obligations or liabilities acquired or incurred, penalties and punishments incurred, or investigations, proceedings and remedies in respect of them, which may be continued as if the repealing Act had not been passed, subject to the specific adjustments the section makes for the commissions and their members. Members holding office under the older statute continued for the balance of their terms in the corresponding commissions, and the forums became commissions without the pending docket being reconstituted.

Two consequences follow for practice. The first concerns forum and valuation. A complaint validly instituted before a District Forum whose pecuniary competence was measured on the composite test does not migrate because the new test would have sent it elsewhere, and a party cannot use commencement as a jurisdictional objection to a pending case. The second concerns appeals, and it is the point decided by the Supreme Court on the deposit condition: the right of appeal is a vested substantive right that accrues when the proceeding is instituted, its conditions are governed by the law then in force, and a later enactment that makes the condition more onerous does not apply to it unless it says so. The Court applied the Constitution Bench formulation from State of Bombay v Supreme General Films Exchange and the line of authority following it, and held that the fifty per cent deposit without a ceiling in Section 67 does not govern appeals arising from complaints filed before commencement. Advisers should therefore identify the date of institution of the complaint before they advise on any deposit figure, because that date, and not the date of the order, selects the regime.

There is a third, quieter consequence. Because the definitions were carried forward, precedent did not reset, and a practitioner can cite a 1995 decision on commercial purpose or a 1995 decision on medical services in a 2019 Act case without apology. Statutes that replace their predecessors while reproducing their operative words import the case law on those words, and the 2019 Act is a textbook instance. The replacement therefore changed the institutions around consumer litigation far more than it changed the meaning of the words consumer litigation is conducted in, and that asymmetry is the deepest finding of this comparison.

How to use this comparison in an examination answer

The standard examination question asks for the differences between the two Acts and invites a two column list. A list earns marks for coverage and loses them for judgement, because it treats a trivial difference and a structural difference as equals. The stronger answer follows the structure of this article. Begin with the deciding factor: one statute created a cause of action and a forum, the other created a cause of action, a forum and an authority. Then take the dimensions in descending order of consequence: the regulator, product liability, the pecuniary measuring rod and its change from a composite test to consideration paid, the territorial addition of the complainant’s residence, unfair contract terms, electronic commerce, mediation, and the appeal deposit with its lost ceiling. Then give the continuities their own paragraph, because the examiner is testing whether the candidate knows that the consumer definition, the commercial purpose exclusion, the two year limitation and the three tier structure were carried forward, and a candidate who presents the 2019 Act as a clean break will be marked as not knowing it. Close with the delay qualification, stated with attribution: the statute added bypasses in mediation and regulatory action but did not address vacancies, bench strength or a sanction for exceeding the disposal endeavour period, so assertions of improvement are not supported in general form. An answer arranged that way demonstrates the three things the question is designed to detect: accurate figures including the 2021 rules thresholds, awareness of continuity, and a defended verdict.

Process discipline: fees, timelines and the version of the opposite party

Comparisons tend to stop at jurisdiction and remedies, but litigants experience a statute as a sequence of deadlines and fees, and the two Acts differ there in ways that affect outcomes. Under the 1986 Act the procedure in Section 13 required the opposite party to file its version within thirty days, extendable by fifteen days, and the Supreme Court in a line of decisions culminating in the Constitution Bench consideration of the question treated the outer limit of forty five days as mandatory in character, so that a version filed late could not be taken on record. That strictness was a deliberate instrument against delay by respondents, and it produced a body of applications, reviews and appeals about a single procedural step. The 2019 Act reproduces the same structure in Section 38: a version within thirty days, extendable by fifteen days, with the same consequence for default. On this point the replacement is a continuation, and practitioners who learned the discipline under the old Act carried it into the new one without adjustment.

Filing fees moved the other way. The older regime prescribed fees scaled to the value of the claim, and the 2019 regime, through the Consumer Protection (Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions) Rules, 2020, provides that no fee is payable for complaints where the consideration paid does not exceed five lakh rupees, with a graded scale above that point. Removing the fee at the bottom of the scale matters more than its amount suggests, because a fee, however small, is a procedural step that can be defected, objected to and adjourned over, and its removal simplifies the smallest claims, which are the claims the system was built for.

Admissibility discipline is the third process change. The commissions are to decide the admissibility of a complaint within twenty one days, and a complaint is deemed admitted if the question is not decided in that period. Combined with electronic filing and the power to hear by video conferencing, the early stages of a case under the later Act are measurably less dependent on physical presence and on the registry’s pace. None of this touches the contested hearing stage, where delay concentrates, and the distinction between a faster front door and an unchanged courtroom is the accurate way to describe what the process reforms achieved.

Costs and frivolous complaints show a quiet discontinuity that comparison tables usually miss. Section 26 of the 1986 Act expressly required a commission that found a complaint frivolous or vexatious to dismiss it for reasons recorded in writing and to order the complainant to pay costs to the opposite party not exceeding ten thousand rupees. The 2019 Act contains no corresponding express provision in that form, and a party who cites Section 26 in a complaint governed by the later Act is citing a repealed section. Commissions retain the general power to award costs as part of their findings and reliefs, and they retain the power to dismiss a complaint that discloses no defect or deficiency, but the dedicated frivolous complaint provision with its fixed ceiling was not reproduced. The change is minor beside the appeal deposit, where the monetary figures set in the nineteen eighties were replaced by a proportion with no ceiling at all, and it is recorded here because it illustrates a general caution: the later Act is not the earlier Act with every figure revised upward, and each provision has to be located in the new text rather than assumed to have survived.

Sector illustrations: insurance, medicine and housing

Three sectors generate a disproportionate share of consumer litigation, and each shows a different facet of the comparison.

Insurance disputes turn on repudiation of claims and on delay in settlement, and they were the staple of the District Forums. Under the 1986 Act a policyholder’s complaint was measured on the composite test, so the sum insured and the compensation claimed together decided the forum, and a large policy could take a straightforward repudiation dispute to the National Commission. Under the 2019 Act the premium or the consideration paid is not the natural measure for an insurance service, and the value of the service paid as consideration has to be identified with care in such complaints, a point on which pleading practice has had to adapt. The substantive law of repudiation did not change: the insurer must act on the policy terms, the insured must disclose material facts, and the commission examines deficiency in service rather than rewriting the contract. What changed for the policyholder is the availability of a complaint to the Central Authority about a misleading representation in the sale of a policy, and the availability of the insurance ombudsman route in parallel, preserved by Section 100.

Medical services turn on the definition of service and on the standard of care. Indian Medical Association v V.P. Shantha settled that medical services for consideration are service under the 1986 Act, and because the definition was carried forward, that settlement governs under the 2019 Act, subject to the later debate about whether healthcare should be excluded, a debate that produced a draft exclusion in an earlier bill that the enacted statute did not adopt. The standard of care applied by the commissions derives from the general law of negligence and from the Supreme Court’s decisions on medical negligence, including the requirement of a credible expert opinion at the threshold in cases that turn on professional judgement. Neither statute altered that body of law. The product liability chapter does, however, give a patient harmed by a defective implant, a contaminated drug or a malfunctioning device a defined claim against the manufacturer that does not depend on proving negligence by the treating doctor, and that separation of device liability from professional liability is a real change in how hospital cases are pleaded.

Housing turns on value, delay and drafted terms, and it is the sector where the pecuniary change and the unfair contract power operate together. A flat priced between fifty lakh rupees and two crore rupees places the complaint in the State Commission on consideration alone, however large the compensation claimed for delay, and the builder’s standard terms on interest, forfeiture of earnest money and unilateral extension of the delivery date are exposed to a declaration of unfairness. Under the 1986 Act the same buyer relied on the composite measure to reach a forum and on the deficiency analysis to neutralise the term. The buyer also has the real estate regulator’s forum, and the choice between the two is governed by the special statute and by the bar on parallel proceedings that the courts have worked out. The comparison in the housing sector therefore shows the general pattern of the two Acts in miniature: the same grievance, a better defined set of tools, and one significant loss, which is the ability to select a higher forum by the size of the claim.

The Councils, consumer rights and the parts of the statute that do not litigate

Both statutes open with institutions that rarely appear in litigation and that a comparison should not ignore, because they reveal what each legislature thought consumer protection was. The 1986 Act provided for Consumer Protection Councils at the central, state and district levels whose object was to promote and protect the rights of consumers, including the right to be protected against hazardous goods and services, the right to information about quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price, the right to be assured access to a variety of goods and services at competitive prices, the right to be heard, the right to seek redressal and the right to consumer education. Those six rights, stated in Section 6 of the older Act, became the standard recitation in Indian consumer education.

The 2019 Act restates the scheme in Chapter II, Sections 3 to 9, retaining central, state and district councils, and it adds a statutory definition of consumer rights in Section 2(9) that includes the right to be protected against goods, products or services that are hazardous to life and property, the right to be informed about quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price, the right to be assured of access to a variety of goods and services at competitive prices, the right to be heard and to be assured that consumer interests receive due consideration at appropriate fora, the right to seek redressal against unfair trade practice, restrictive trade practice or unscrupulous exploitation, and the right to consumer awareness. The movement from a statement in the councils provision to a definition in the interpretation clause is characteristic of the later statute’s drafting: concepts that the older Act left in preambles and objects clauses were converted into defined terms that operative provisions could pick up. Hazard in the definition connects to the recall power, information connects to the disclosure duties in the e-commerce rules, and redressal connects to the commissions. A definition that does no work is decoration; these definitions do work, and noticing that is part of understanding why the later Act is longer without being merely more verbose.

The strongest case against the verdict, and why it does not overturn the count

A verdict that cannot state the case against itself has not been tested. The strongest case against allocating seven dimensions to the consumer runs as follows, and it is made in substance by industry associations in their representations on the Act and by respondent side practitioners in commentary on its working.

The argument begins with the regulator. A body that can investigate on its own motion, direct a recall, order reimbursement and penalise an advertisement, and whose directions are backed by criminal punishment for non compliance, is a body whose errors are expensive. A recall direction issued on a contested scientific question can destroy a product line before an appeal is heard, and the appeal lies to the National Commission, which is an adjudicatory body with its own docket pressure. On this view the dimension should be scored not by who the power was created for but by the risk it creates, and risk falls on business.

It continues with product liability. A defined catalogue of defects sounds like certainty, but the catalogue includes design defect and failure to warn, both of which invite hindsight reasoning in which a product is judged against knowledge acquired after it was sold. Sellers who are not manufacturers are drawn in on grounds that include having exercised substantial control over labelling or having failed to identify the manufacturer, which in a long import chain may be a matter of record keeping rather than fault. Small sellers, on this argument, carry exposure out of proportion to their margin.

It turns then to the appeal deposit. Fifty per cent of a large award, without a ceiling, is a barrier that operates before the merits are examined. Where a commission has awarded compensation on a contested valuation, the respondent must fund half of a figure it contends is wrong in order to be heard. The vested rights reasoning that protected pre commencement complaints acknowledges the weight of the burden; the argument is that the burden is no lighter merely because the complaint was filed later.

Finally it points to the pecuniary change from the other end. Consideration paid is a crude measure of a dispute’s difficulty. A medical negligence claim on a modest hospital bill, an insurance claim on a small premium, or a claim about a low priced but dangerous product may involve expert evidence and contested science, and the statute sends all of them to the tier with the least institutional depth. The Supreme Court upheld the classification, but upholding a classification as rational is not the same as finding it well designed, and the Panchal challenge articulated a real cost.

Each of those points is well founded, and two of them have been incorporated into the reasoning above rather than rebutted: the pecuniary dimension was allocated to the business, and the product liability allocation was qualified by the observation that proof and the Section 87 exceptions remain. What the counter case does not do is identify a dimension in which the 2019 Act took a consumer right away. No relief available under the older Act was withdrawn. No forum was closed. No category of complainant lost standing. The limitation period was not shortened, the definition was not narrowed, the appellate route was not removed, and the additional remedies principle was preserved. The burdens the counter case identifies are burdens attached to new liabilities and new enforcement, which is a different thing from a transfer of advantage on an existing dimension. A comparison that scored risk creation as a business win on the regulator dimension would have to explain why a power created to protect consumers, exercised for consumers and appealable by business, counts for the party it regulates. The count therefore stands at seven to one with two shared, and the deciding factor stands with it: the additions are structural, and the losses are procedural or incidental to those additions.

What can still move without another Act of Parliament

One practical lesson of the comparison is often missed by both sides. Several of the most consequential numbers in the 2019 scheme are not in the Act at all, or are in the Act subject to a power to prescribe a different figure. The pecuniary bands are the clearest instance: Sections 34, 47 and 58 were enacted with one set of limits and the Central Government prescribed another set by rules in December 2021, moving the District ceiling from one crore rupees to fifty lakh rupees and the State ceiling from ten crore rupees to two crore rupees. A change of that magnitude was made by subordinate legislation, without a bill, without a debate on the floor and with effect on every complaint filed after the rules commenced. Filing fees are likewise set by rules. Qualifications and the method of recruitment for commission members are set by rules, which is why the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court were able to reshape the appointments framework in the Limaye litigation without touching the Act. The e-commerce duties are set by rules under Section 94. The misleading advertisement guidelines of 2022 were issued by the Central Authority under its own powers.

For a reader assessing either statute, the implication is that the Act supplies the architecture and the rules supply much of the calibration, and calibration is where litigation outcomes are decided. A business monitoring only amendments to the Act will miss the changes that affect it. A consumer organisation campaigning only for statutory amendment will overlook the shorter route of a rule change. And a student who memorises the enacted pecuniary figures without the 2021 rules will answer the most frequently asked question on this subject incorrectly. The comparison between 1986 and 2019 is therefore not only a comparison between two texts. It is a comparison between a statute whose important figures were in the text and were changed by amendment Acts in 1993 and 2002, and a statute that delegates its figures and can be recalibrated by notification. That difference in legislative technique may in the long run matter as much as any single dimension in the table.

Administrative control, review and the daily character of the commissions

A comparison that stops at jurisdiction and remedies misses the provisions that determine how a commission behaves on an ordinary working day. Under the 1986 Act, Section 24B gave the National Commission administrative control over the State Commissions in matters such as calling for periodical returns on institution, disposal and pendency, issuing instructions for uniform procedure and prior service of documents, and generally overseeing functioning without interfering with quasi judicial freedom, and it gave each State Commission corresponding control over the District Forums. The machinery existed on paper and depended for its effect on the willingness of the higher commission to use it and on the state governments that funded the lower tiers.

The 2019 Act retains administrative control and adds three instruments that change daily practice. The first is review. A District Commission may review its own order where there is an error apparent on the face of the record, on its own motion or on application within thirty days, a power the District Forum did not possess and whose absence forced parties into appeal for errors that a single bench could have corrected in a week. The State and National Commissions carry corresponding review powers in Sections 50 and 60. The second is transfer. The State Commission may transfer a complaint from one District Commission to another within the state, and the National Commission may transfer between District Commissions in different states and between State Commissions, on the application of a party or on its own motion where the interests of justice require it, which gives the system a corrective for a forum that is not functioning or a bench that cannot be constituted. The third is the expert assistance provision, under which the State and National Commissions may, where a matter involves the larger interest of consumers, direct an individual, organisation or expert to assist the commission, a provision that recognises the technical character of many modern consumer disputes.

None of these instruments is dramatic, and none would appear in a list of headline differences. Their cumulative effect, however, is to make the commissions under the later Act more like a managed system of tribunals and less like three unconnected sets of benches. For the purposes of the verdict column they were not scored as a separate dimension, because they operate inside dimension four, forum structure, which was allocated to neither side. They are recorded here so that the neither allocation is not misread as a finding that nothing changed in how the commissions are run. A great deal changed in how they are run. What did not change is who runs them, on what appointment criteria, and with what security, and it is that unresolved question, tested in the Limaye litigation and in the Supreme Court’s proceedings on vacancies and infrastructure, that keeps dimension four in the shared column.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the main difference between the two consumer statutes?

The main difference is institutional. The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 created a cause of action and a three tier set of adjudicatory forums, and nothing else: enforcement depended entirely on an individual consumer filing a complaint. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 kept that cause of action and those forums and added an authority, the Central Consumer Protection Authority, which can investigate on its own motion, order recall of unsafe goods, direct discontinuation of unfair practices and penalise misleading advertisements. It also added a product liability chapter, statutory mediation and express coverage of electronic commerce. One statute waited for grievances; the other can act before a grievance is filed.

Q: How did the forums and their powers change?

The three tier structure survived: District, State and National Commissions, with judicial presidents at each level and members drawn from law, economics, commerce, accountancy, industry, public affairs and administration. The District Forum became a District Commission, State Commissions were given a minimum strength of a President and four members, and each commission gained a power to review its own order for an error apparent on the record, which the District Forum lacked. The State and National Commissions also gained power to declare unfair contract terms null and void, and transfer powers were articulated more fully. Appointments became the contested area, and the qualification rules made under the later Act were partly struck down by the courts.

Q: How did the consumer jurisdiction rules change?

Pecuniary jurisdiction changed in both measure and amount. Under the 1986 Act the measure was the value of the goods or services plus the compensation claimed, with limits of twenty lakh rupees for the District Forum, one crore rupees for the State Commission and above one crore rupees for the National Commission after the 2002 amendment. Under the 2019 Act the measure is the value of the goods or services paid as consideration alone, and the operative limits, set by the Jurisdiction Rules of 2021, are fifty lakh rupees for the District Commission, two crore rupees for the State Commission and above two crore rupees for the National Commission. Territorial jurisdiction also widened to include the complainant’s residence.

Q: What new liabilities did the later consumer statute create?

The later statute created a product liability action in Chapter VI, under which a product manufacturer, a product service provider and a product seller may each be liable to compensate for harm caused by a defective product or a deficient product service, with manufacturer liability attaching to manufacturing defects, design defects, deviation from specifications, breach of express warranty and inadequate instructions or warnings. It created liability for endorsers and manufacturers for false or misleading advertisements, including monetary penalties and a prohibition on endorsing, created offences for dealing in adulterated and spurious goods graded by the injury caused, and made failure to comply with the Central Authority’s directions an offence.

Q: Did the change reduce delay in consumer cases?

The evidence does not support a general claim that it did. The causes most often identified for delay are vacancies in the commissions, the volume of cases relative to bench strength, and the absence of a sanction when the statutory endeavour period for disposal is exceeded. The 2019 Act addressed none of those directly. It imposed admission discipline, retained strict timelines for the opposite party’s version, added mediation as a route around adjudication and gave the Central Authority power to dispose of advertisement and recall matters without a contested hearing. Those are bypasses rather than repairs, and commentary on the Act’s working divides between observers who note faster early stages and practitioners who note that the contested hearing stage depends on bench strength.

Q: What did consumers gain and what did businesses gain?

Consumers gained a regulator able to act without a complainant, a product liability action, the right to file where they reside or work, a route to have unfair contract terms declared void, express protection in electronic commerce, a mediation chapter and a much heavier appeal deposit protecting an award in their favour. Businesses gained one structural benefit of real commercial value: certainty of forum, because pecuniary jurisdiction follows the consideration recorded in the transaction and cannot be altered by the size of the compensation claimed. Businesses also gained defined catalogues of product defects and unfair contract species, a single national rulebook for online trade and a mediation route that can cap exposure. On a count of ten dimensions, seven favour the consumer, one favours the business and two are shared.

Q: How did the consumer appeal requirements change?

The ladder stayed the same and the price of climbing it changed. Under the 1986 Act appeals lay within thirty days at each step, and a person required to pay under the order had to deposit fifty per cent of the amount or twenty five thousand rupees at the first step, thirty five thousand rupees at the second and fifty thousand rupees at the third, whichever was less. Under the 2019 Act an appeal from a District Commission to a State Commission lies within forty five days, the higher steps remain thirty days, and Sections 41, 51 and 67 each require a deposit of fifty per cent of the amount ordered with no ceiling. Appeals from complaints filed before commencement keep the older capped deposits, because the right of appeal is a vested right.

Q: Was anything lost in the consumer law replacement?

Very little of substance was lost, and identifying the losses precisely matters. Complainants lost the ability to choose a higher forum by the size of the compensation claimed, because jurisdiction follows consideration paid. The express provision in Section 26 of the 1986 Act for dismissing a frivolous or vexatious complaint with costs up to ten thousand rupees was not reproduced in that form. Nothing else of consequence went: the definition of a consumer, the commercial purpose exclusion with its self employment explanation, the two year limitation period with condonation, the three tier structure, the core list of reliefs and the principle that the Act supplements other laws were all carried forward in materially the same terms.

Q: How does the territorial filing rule differ between the two Acts?

Under Section 11(2) of the 1986 Act a complaint could be filed where the opposite party actually and voluntarily resided, carried on business, had a branch office or personally worked for gain, or where the cause of action arose wholly or in part. The consumer’s own location was irrelevant. Under Section 34(2) of the 2019 Act all of those grounds remain, and a further ground is added: the District Commission within whose jurisdiction the complainant resides or personally works for gain. The practical effect is that a buyer who dealt with a distant seller, including an online seller, can file at home, and the respondent can no longer use distance to discount the value of a small claim.

Q: Which statute governs a complaint that was pending when the 2019 Act commenced?

The 1986 Act governs it. Section 107 of the 2019 Act repeals the earlier statute with savings that preserve the previous operation of the repealed Act, rights and liabilities accrued under it, and proceedings instituted under it, and the Supreme Court has held that complaints instituted before commencement continue before the forums constituted under the older scheme rather than being transferred according to the new pecuniary bands. The same principle governs appeals arising from those complaints: because the right of appeal and its conditions are vested rights that accrue at institution, the older capped deposit applies and the uncapped fifty per cent deposit in the later Act does not. The date of institution, not the date of the order, selects the regime.

Q: How did the treatment of misleading advertisements change between the two Acts?

Under the 1986 Act a misleading advertisement could only be attacked as an unfair trade practice inside an individual complaint, and the available orders were discontinuance of the practice and compensation for the complainant’s loss. No authority could order an advertisement withdrawn across the market and no consequence attached to the person endorsing it. Under the 2019 Act the Central Consumer Protection Authority may, after investigation, direct discontinuation or modification of a false or misleading advertisement, impose a penalty of up to ten lakh rupees for a first contravention and fifty lakh rupees for a subsequent one on a manufacturer or endorser, and prohibit an endorser from endorsing for up to one year or three years. Section 89 adds criminal punishment for a false or misleading advertisement.

Q: What changed for online purchases under the 2019 Act?

Electronic commerce moved from implication to text. Section 2(16) defines e-commerce as buying or selling goods or services, including digital products, over a digital or electronic network, and Section 94 empowers the Central Government to take measures against unfair trade practices in e-commerce and direct selling. The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 impose duties on platforms and on sellers using them: display of seller identity and total price with a breakup, information about return, refund, exchange, warranty, delivery and payment, a grievance officer who must acknowledge a complaint within forty eight hours and redress it within one month, and prohibitions on price manipulation and unfair classification of consumers. Under the 1986 Act none of these duties existed, and online transactions were fitted into definitions written for shops.

Q: How do the two Acts differ on unfair contract terms?

The 1986 Act had no provision on unfair contract terms. A commission could find a deficiency in service and grant relief, but it had no statutory power to strike down a term of the contract itself, so an oppressive clause on forfeiture, penalty or unilateral termination had to be resisted through general contract doctrine in separate proceedings. The 2019 Act defines an unfair contract in Section 2(46), listing terms that cause a significant change in the consumer’s rights, including manifestly excessive security deposits, disproportionate penalties, refusal to accept early repayment, unilateral termination without reasonable cause, assignment to the consumer’s detriment and unreasonable charges or conditions. Sections 49(2) and 59(2) empower the State and National Commissions to declare such a term null and void. The District Commission has no such power.

Q: Does mediation under the 2019 Act replace adjudication by a commission?

No. Mediation under Chapter V of the 2019 Act is an additional route that operates inside the commission system and only with the consent of the parties. A commission that sees an element of settlement may refer the complaint to a mediation cell attached to it, staffed by empanelled mediators. If the parties settle, the settlement is placed before the commission, which records it in an order, and no appeal lies against an order recording a mediated settlement. If mediation fails, the commission resumes the complaint and decides it on the merits. The 1986 Act contained no mediation mechanism at all, so disputes that would have settled early were processed as contests unless the parties compromised informally or used a Lok Adalat.

Q: How did the enforcement of commission orders change under the 2019 Act?

Under the 1986 Act, Section 25 provided for attachment and sale of property where an interim order was not complied with and for recovery of money due under an order by a certificate to the Collector, who recovered it as arrears of land revenue, while Section 27 punished non compliance with imprisonment of one month to three years or a fine of two thousand to ten thousand rupees. Under the 2019 Act, Section 71 provides that every order of a commission shall be enforced in the same manner as a decree of a civil court, with power to transmit the order to a court for execution where the commission cannot execute it, and Section 72 punishes non compliance with imprisonment of one month to three years or a fine of twenty five thousand rupees to one lakh rupees.

Q: Why can a small purchase support a very large compensation claim in the District Commission?

Because pecuniary jurisdiction under the 2019 Act is measured by the value of the goods or services paid as consideration and by nothing else. The compensation claimed is not added to that figure, so a buyer who paid forty four lakh rupees for a vehicle may claim compensation many times that amount and the complaint still belongs to the District Commission, whose ceiling under the Jurisdiction Rules of 2021 is fifty lakh rupees of consideration. Under the 1986 Act the same claim would have gone to a higher commission because the value of the goods and the compensation claimed were added together. The Supreme Court upheld the consideration based test against a challenge under Article 14 brought by claimants who argued that grave claims deserved a higher forum.

Q: Did the definition of a consumer change between the two Acts?

In substance, no. Section 2(7) of the 2019 Act reproduces Section 2(1)(d) of the 1986 Act: a consumer is a person who buys goods or hires or avails services for consideration, including a beneficiary who uses the goods or services with the buyer’s approval, and excluding a person who obtains goods or services for resale or for a commercial purpose. The explanation protecting a person who buys goods and uses them exclusively to earn a livelihood by means of self employment was also carried forward. Because the words were reproduced, the case law on them continues to apply, including the Supreme Court’s holding that commercial purpose is a question of fact in each case and its holding that medical services for consideration are a service.

Q: How did the penalty for disobeying a commission order change?

The imprisonment range did not change and the fine changed substantially. Section 27 of the 1986 Act punished failure or omission to comply with an order of a District Forum, State Commission or National Commission with imprisonment for a term not less than one month and extending to three years, or a fine of not less than two thousand rupees and extending to ten thousand rupees, or both, with a proviso allowing a lesser sentence for adequate and special reasons recorded in writing. Section 72 of the 2019 Act keeps the imprisonment range of one month to three years and raises the fine to not less than twenty five thousand rupees and extending to one lakh rupees, a tenfold increase in the ceiling and a much larger increase in the floor.

Q: Can a consumer use other laws alongside the consumer statute after the replacement?

Yes, as before. Section 3 of the 1986 Act provided that its provisions were in addition to and not in derogation of the provisions of any other law, and Section 100 of the 2019 Act repeats that provision. A consumer may therefore pursue a remedy under a special statute, such as the real estate regulation law for a housing grievance or the insurance ombudsman scheme for a policy grievance, or under the general law of contract and tort, subject to any bar or election rule contained in that other law and to the rule against pursuing the same relief in two forums at once. What the consumer statute gives is an additional, comparatively inexpensive forum with summary procedure, not an exclusive code that displaces the rest of the legal system.

Q: How did the 2019 Act change who appoints commission members and for how long?

The 2019 Act moved the detail of qualifications, recruitment and service conditions for the State and District Commissions into rules made by the Central Government, and the Consumer Protection (Qualification for Appointment) Rules, 2020 prescribed twenty years of experience for State Commission members and fifteen years for District Commission members, with a selection committee empowered to dispense with a written examination. The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court struck down those experience rules and the examination dispensing rule as arbitrary, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in Secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs v Dr Mahindra Bhaskar Limaye, holding that a bachelor’s degree with ten years of professional experience in the relevant fields suffices and directing selection by written examination and viva voce until a fresh framework is enacted.