A person who decides to file a consumer complaint in India usually starts in the wrong place. The grievance feels like the case: the washing machine that failed within its warranty, the flat whose possession never came, the insurance claim repudiated on a ground the policyholder had never heard of, the hospital bill that bears no relation to the estimate. Yet a complaint before a consumer commission is rarely lost at the hearing, on the strength of the grievance. It is lost at the doorway, on one of four threshold questions that have nothing to do with how badly the trader or the service provider behaved, and every one of those questions can be answered correctly before a single page is filed.

The four threshold failures recur so reliably that they deserve to be named at the outset, because the rest of this article is organised around defeating them. The first is that the purchase was made for a commercial purpose, so the complainant is not a consumer at all and the commission has no business hearing the matter. The second is that the two year limitation period had already run when the complaint was filed, and no sufficient cause for the delay was shown. The third is that the complaint was filed before a commission that lacked pecuniary jurisdiction, because the filer measured the claim by the compensation demanded rather than by the consideration actually paid. The fourth is that the grievance, properly read, was a breach of contract rather than a defect in goods or a deficiency in service, and belonged in a civil court. A filer who checks these four points in advance has done more for the complaint than any eloquence at the hearing can do later.

What follows is the whole route, in the order in which a complainant walks it: the consumer test, standing, the choice of commission by value, the choice of place, the limitation clock, the documents and the drafting, the fee, the modes of filing including electronic filing, admission, the opposite party’s version, evidence and laboratory testing, mediation, the order and its reliefs, enforcement, and the appeal ladder. The governing statute is the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, which repealed and replaced the Act of 1986 for complaints instituted after its commencement, and whose own design and innovations belong to the article on the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and the replacement it effected; this article takes that design as given and confines itself to procedure. Two cautions belong at the front. Fees are prescribed by rules and are revised from time to time, and the electronic filing portal has changed its name, its interface and its reach since it was launched, so the fee figures and the portal steps stated here should be confirmed against the rules and the portal in force when a complaint is actually filed. And the commissions are not courts of general jurisdiction: they are statutory fora of summary procedure, built for claims that can be decided largely on documents, and the procedure described here is theirs and no one else’s.

The forum in outline: three tiers, one system

The machinery the complaint enters is worth a paragraph of orientation. The District Commission sits for the district, the State Commission for the State, and the National Commission for the country, and each is a bench of a President and members, the Presidents drawn from the judiciary and the members appointed under the Act’s qualification and selection provisions. Original complaints enter at the tier fixed by value, appeals climb the ladder described later in this article, and the revisional and administrative superintendence of the tier above runs over the tier below: the National Commission holds administrative control over the State Commissions under Section 70, may call for periodical returns of institution and disposal, and the State Commissions hold the corresponding position over the District Commissions. For the filer, the institutional facts that matter are two. The bench that hears the complaint will include a President with judicial experience, which is why the procedure, though summary, observes the forms of evidence and limitation with a court’s strictness. And the system’s own supervision is concerned with disposal and pendency, which is why a complaint that is complete on its face moves through it faster than one that must be repaired at every stage.

The first question is not where to file, but whether you are a consumer

Section 2(7) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 defines a consumer through two limbs, one for goods and one for services, and the exclusions attached to those limbs decide more complaints than any other provision in the Act. A consumer is a person who buys goods for a consideration that has been paid or promised, or partly paid and partly promised, or is payable under a system of deferred payment, and the definition includes any user of the goods, other than the buyer, whose use is made with the buyer’s approval. The services limb is parallel: a person who hires or avails of a service for consideration, and any beneficiary of the service other than the person who hired it, where the service is availed of with that person’s approval. Two features of this text matter at the threshold. Consideration need not have been paid in full or even paid at all; a promise to pay, part payment, and hire purchase or other deferred payment arrangements all qualify, so a buyer under an instalment plan is a consumer from the first instalment. And the protected person is wider than the person who paid: the family member who uses the appliance the buyer purchased, and the patient treated under a policy or an arrangement someone else paid for, can each be a consumer in their own right, provided the use or the benefit flows from the transaction with the buyer’s or the hirer’s approval.

Against that width stand two exclusions, and they are where complaints die. A person who obtains goods for resale is not a consumer. And a person who obtains goods, or avails of services, for a commercial purpose is not a consumer. The exclusion is then qualified by an Explanation which Parliament added to the corresponding definition in the Act of 1986 by the Amendment Act 50 of 1993, with effect from 18 June 1993, and which the Act of 2019 carries forward: commercial purpose does not include the use by a person of goods bought and used by him exclusively for the purpose of earning his livelihood by means of self-employment. The same Explanation records that buying goods and hiring services include offline and online transactions, through electronic means, teleshopping, direct selling and multi level marketing, so the channel of purchase is irrelevant to status.

Can a business ever file a consumer complaint?

Yes, in defined situations. A business is a consumer where the goods or services are not obtained for resale and the purchase has no close connection with profit generation, and a self-employed person who buys equipment exclusively to earn a livelihood is protected by the statute in terms. A purchase for large scale commercial manufacture is outside the definition.

The leading authority remains the Supreme Court’s decision in Laxmi Engineering Works v P.S.G. Industrial Institute, (1995) 3 SCC 583, decided under the Act of 1986 on a definition the Act of 2019 reproduces in substance. The complainant there had purchased machinery worth a little over Rs 21 lakh for manufacturing machine parts on a large scale for profit, and the Court held that the purchase was for a commercial purpose and the complaint was not maintainable. The test the Court laid down is a question of fact in each case: whether the purchase is for use in an activity that is closely and directly connected with profit generation, judged by the nature and scale of the use rather than by the price of the item alone. A costly machine bought by a large manufacturer fails the test; the same machine bought by a person who works it himself to earn his living passes, because the statute expressly preserves the self-employed buyer. The judgment’s own illustrations carry the point: the auto rickshaw bought by the man who drives it himself, and the lathe bought by the machinist who works at it himself, are purchases by consumers, and the presence of a helper or two does not convert a livelihood into a commercial enterprise. The Court also recorded that losing consumer status does not extinguish the underlying claim; it redirects the claimant to an ordinary civil suit, and the complainant in that case was left free to pursue one.

Two practical consequences follow for anyone preparing to file. The first is that the complaint should plead the facts of status, not merely assert the label: where the purchase is by a small proprietor, a professional, or a firm, the complaint should state what the goods or services were used for and why that use is not a commercial purpose within the statutory meaning, because the objection, if it is coming, will come at admission and will be decided on the pleadings. The second is that some purchases sit close to the line and are decided against the filer on facts that were always visible: goods bought to be resold, stock bought for a shop, and equipment bought to expand a profit making operation are the recurring failures. There is a related boundary in the definition of service itself. Section 2(42) defines service as service of any description made available to potential users, across an illustrative list that runs from banking, financing, insurance, transport and the supply of electrical energy to housing construction and entertainment, but it excludes a service rendered free of charge and a service under a contract of personal service. A patient treated entirely free in a charitable institution, and an employee complaining about an employer under a contract of personal service, are therefore outside the complaint route for a different reason: not because the purpose was commercial, but because no service within the definition was hired at all.

Who may file, and what may be complained of

Standing under the Act of 2019 is deliberately wider than the individual buyer, and Section 2(5), which defines the complainant, read with Section 35, which governs the manner of making a complaint, lists who may set the machinery in motion. The consumer to whom the goods were sold or delivered, or the services provided, may file. A voluntary consumer association registered under any law in force may file, whether or not the affected consumer is a member of it, which is what allows an organised body to take up a grievance its member could not pursue alone. One or more consumers having the same interest may file on behalf of numerous consumers with the permission of the commission, the representative complaint, to which the procedure of Order I Rule 8 of the Code of Civil Procedure applies with the necessary adaptations under Section 38(11). The Central Government, a State Government and the Central Consumer Protection Authority may each file. On the death of a consumer, a legal heir or legal representative may file or continue; for a consumer who is a minor, a parent or legal guardian acts. A complaint may be presented in person, by an authorised agent, or by post, and it may be filed electronically in the manner the rules prescribe, with the prescribed fee accompanying it.

The public routes deserve a sentence of their own, because they change the individual filer’s calculation in the case of a practice that harms thousands of consumers in small amounts each. A complaint or a reference to the Central Authority may produce an investigation, directions or a recall that answers the grievance without any individual litigation, and product liability claims, which the Act treats in their own chapter, may be brought as complaints under Section 35 like any other, the claimant pleading the harm suffered, the defect in the product or the deficiency in the product service, and the compensation claimed under Section 39. The individual complaint remains the instrument the filer controls, and the public routes are complements to it rather than substitutes for it, since an investigation by the Authority neither awards the individual compensation nor stops the individual’s limitation clock, and a filer who waits on an Authority proceeding while the two years run is making a choice about limitation that should be made with open eyes.

The grounds of complaint are fixed by Section 2(6), and a complaint must be framed inside one of them, because a grievance that fits none of them is a civil dispute wearing a consumer label. A complaint may allege that an unfair contract, an unfair trade practice or a restrictive trade practice has been adopted by a trader or a service provider. It may allege that goods bought, or agreed to be bought, suffer from one or more defects, defect being defined by Section 2(10) as a fault, imperfection or shortcoming in quality, quantity, potency, purity or standard required by law, by contract, or as claimed by the trader. It may allege that services hired or availed of suffer from deficiency, defined by Section 2(11) as a fault, imperfection, shortcoming or inadequacy in the quality, nature and manner of performance required by law or undertaken by contract, and expressly including an act of negligence or omission causing loss or injury, and the deliberate withholding of relevant information from the consumer. It may allege that a price has been charged in excess of the price fixed by law, displayed on the goods or their package, displayed on a price list exhibited under any law, or agreed between the parties; this excess price ground is where consumer law meets the packaged commodities regime, and the declarations that regime requires on a package are the subject of the article on the Legal Metrology Act, 2009. It may allege that goods hazardous to life and safety are being offered for sale in contravention of safety standards or by a trader who knows them to be unsafe, and the parallel ground for hazardous services. And it may be a claim for product liability, against a product manufacturer, product seller or product service provider for harm caused by a defective product or by deficiency in services connected with it, under the product liability chapter of the Act.

The fourth threshold failure lives inside this list. A complaint is not a suit for specific performance and not a debt recovery device: the commission’s jurisdiction is triggered by a defect in goods, a deficiency in service, an unfair practice, an excessive price, a hazard, or product liability, and a pleading that in substance asks the commission to enforce a bargain, settle a running account, or construe a disputed contract will be turned away to the civil court. The two poles of the courts’ approach are both found in decisions of the Supreme Court from the same period. In Dr J.J. Merchant v Shrinath Chaturvedi, (2002) 6 SCC 635, the Court rejected the argument that complaints raising complex questions, there in medical negligence cases requiring expert evidence, must be sent away to civil courts merely because they are complex, holding that the commissions are equipped to decide such matters and that to hold otherwise would defeat the Act’s purpose. In Synco Industries v State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, (2002) 1 SCC 1, by contrast, a complaint that required the unravelling of elaborate accounts between the parties was held unsuited to the summary procedure, and the complainant was left to a civil suit. Read together, the decisions mark the boundary a filer should test before filing: if the case can be proved on the transaction documents, the correspondence and, where needed, a laboratory report or an expert affidavit, it belongs before the commission; if it needs a trial, it does not, and filing it before the commission spends the limitation period in the wrong building.

The recurring grievances: how real disputes map onto the grounds

The grounds in Section 2(6) are abstract, and the filer who cannot translate a grievance into one of them has a story rather than a complaint. The translation is best learned from the recurring disputes that fill the commissions’ cause lists. A motor car that breaks down repeatedly within its warranty, or a refrigerator whose compressor fails in the first season, presents a defect in goods: the evidence is the job cards and the repair history, the laboratory route is available if the trader disputes the diagnosis, and the relief aimed at is repair, replacement or refund. A builder who has taken the price in instalments and delivered neither the flat nor a credible date presents a deficiency in service: the evidence is the agreement and the payment receipts, the cause of action runs from the promised date of possession and continues while possession is withheld, and the relief aimed at is possession with compensation for delay, or a refund of the deposits with interest. An insurer who repudiates a claim under a policy presents a deficiency in service crystallised on a date the filer can circle, the date of the repudiation letter: the evidence is the policy, the claim papers and the repudiation itself, and the dispute will turn on the policy’s terms and the facts of the loss. A hospital or practitioner whose treatment is alleged to have fallen below the required standard presents a deficiency in service of the hardest evidential kind, because the deficiency must be established against professional standards, usually with expert support, and the complaint that pleads only a bad outcome pleads nothing. An online order that never arrives, or arrives as a different and cheaper article, presents a defect or a deficiency depending on what was supplied, with the added practical problem that the seller’s identity and address must be established before the complaint can be framed, which is where the commission’s power under Section 38(4) to direct an electronic service provider to furnish information, documents or records becomes part of the filer’s own toolkit rather than a provision for other people.

Two lessons run across the five. The ground determines the evidence, and the evidence is assembled before filing or not at all: the car owner preserves the job cards, the allottee the receipts, the insured the repudiation letter, the patient the treatment record, the online buyer the order confirmation and the delivery record. And the ground determines the starting date of limitation as surely as it determines the forum, because the two year period of Section 69 runs from the event that completes the ground, the failure to repair, the missed possession date, the repudiation, the conclusion of the treatment, and not from the transaction that began the relationship. A filer who can state, in one sentence each, the ground, the completing event and the document that proves it has done the analytical work the complaint requires, and the drafting that follows is transcription.

Which commission: jurisdiction is measured by what was paid

The three tiers of commissions divide original complaints by value, and the Act of 2019 changed the measuring rod. Under the Act of 1986, the tier was fixed by the value of the goods or services together with the compensation claimed, a formula that rewarded inflation: a complainant who wanted a higher forum could plead a larger compensation figure and manufacture jurisdiction, and commissions spent their time on objections that the claim had been swollen for exactly that purpose. The Act of 2019 measures jurisdiction by a single figure, the value of the goods or services paid as consideration. What the complainant hopes to recover is irrelevant to the choice of forum. A filer must therefore begin with the invoice and the receipts, not with the damages calculation, and must total what was actually paid as consideration for the goods or the service complained of.

As enacted, Section 34(1) gave the District Commission jurisdiction over complaints where the value of the goods or services paid as consideration does not exceed Rs 1 crore, Section 47(1) gave the State Commission complaints where that value exceeds Rs 1 crore but does not exceed Rs 10 crore, and Section 58(1) gave the National Commission complaints above Rs 10 crore, and each provision carries a proviso empowering the Central Government to prescribe a different value. The Act separately fixes limits for complaints against unfair contracts, which the filer pursuing that ground should read in the text of the same sections. The Central Government exercised the proviso power through the Consumer Protection (Jurisdiction of the District Commission, the State Commission and the National Commission) Rules, 2021, notified on 30 December 2021, and the operative bands for a complaint are therefore the rules’ bands, not the figures printed in the sections. Under the rules, the District Commission entertains complaints where the consideration paid does not exceed Rs 50 lakh. The State Commission entertains complaints where the consideration paid exceeds Rs 50 lakh and does not exceed Rs 2 crore. The National Commission entertains complaints where the consideration paid exceeds Rs 2 crore. A filer who works from the Act’s printed figures, as many published guides still invite, will file a complaint in the band between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore in the District Commission and meet a jurisdictional objection that the rules have already decided.

Forum choice has a second dimension in the largest single class of District and State Commission litigation, the homebuyer’s complaint, because a buyer of a flat in a stalled project may hold remedies under the real estate statute and under the consumer statute at the same time, and the two routes differ in their thresholds, their interim powers and their execution machinery. The choice between them, and the way the consideration test applies to a flat purchase, is worked through in the comparison of the RERA and consumer routes for homebuyers, and a housing complainant should settle that choice before settling the forum, since the tier analysis in this article assumes the consumer route has already been chosen.

The computation deserves a worked passage, because the errors are predictable. The consideration is the value of the goods or services paid as consideration, and the filer totals what was paid for the thing complained of: the price of the goods, with the taxes and charges that formed part of the price, or the price paid for the service. A washing machine bought for Rs 42,000, a motorcycle for Rs 1.6 lakh and a car for Rs 18 lakh all fall to the District Commission, however large the compensation claimed on top of them. A flat for which Rs 65 lakh has been paid falls to the State Commission, and a flat for which Rs 2.4 crore has been paid falls to the National Commission. Insurance complaints surprise filers who work from the claim rather than the consideration: the service bought is the cover, and the consideration paid for it is the premium, so a disputed claim of Rs 1 crore under a policy whose premiums total Rs 3 lakh is measured for jurisdiction by the premium figure the statute prescribes, and not by the sum in dispute. Instalments require the same care: the consideration is the value paid as consideration for the goods or the service, and a buyer who has paid part of the price of a flat should compute the tier on the consideration paid and say in the complaint what has been paid and what remains payable, rather than assuming the full agreement value governs. Where a complaint joins several transactions or several complainants, the value is worked out on the complaint as framed, and a filer in doubt between two tiers should plead the computation expressly, because a computation pleaded and reasoned is the best answer to a jurisdictional objection taken at admission.

The consequence of filing in the wrong tier is not the end of the complaint, but it is expensive in the currency this regime trades in, which is time. A commission that finds the consideration falls outside its band does not decide the merits; it returns the complaint for presentation to the commission that has jurisdiction, or the complaint is dismissed for want of jurisdiction with liberty to approach the proper forum, and the filer begins again with a fresh presentation, a fresh admission hearing and a limitation period that has kept running throughout. The computation is a five minute exercise with the receipts in hand, and it is the cheapest insurance in the entire procedure.

A separate limb in the same sections: complaints against unfair contracts

One class of complaint carries its own jurisdictional limb, and a filer in that class who applies the bands above without reading further will err. Section 2(46) defines an unfair contract as a contract between a manufacturer, trader or service provider and a consumer whose terms cause a significant change in the rights of the consumer, and the definition instances the recurring species: requiring manifestly excessive security deposits for performance, imposing a penalty for breach that is wholly disproportionate to the loss occasioned, refusing to accept early repayment of a debt on payment of the applicable penalty, entitling a party to terminate the contract without reasonable cause, and imposing unreasonable charges, obligations or conditions that put the consumer at a disadvantage. A complaint alleging an unfair contract is a ground of complaint under Section 2(6) in its own right, and Sections 34, 47 and 58 fix the tiers for such complaints by a limb separate from the goods and services limb: as enacted, the District Commission takes unfair contract complaints where the consideration does not exceed Rs 1 crore, the State Commission those above Rs 1 crore and up to Rs 10 crore, and the National Commission those above Rs 10 crore. The Jurisdiction Rules 2021 revised the values in the goods and services limb and did not revise the unfair contract limb, so the two limbs run on different figures within the same sections, and which limb governs depends on how the complaint is framed. A filer whose real grievance is a forfeiture clause, a one sided termination right or a disproportionate charge should plead the unfairness of the term as a ground, compute the tier on the limb that ground attracts, and say which limb is invoked, because the objection that the wrong band was applied is, in this corner of the Act, an objection the statute’s own drafting makes easy to take and easy to avoid.

Where the complaint may be filed: the complainant’s district counts

Territorial jurisdiction answers a different question from pecuniary jurisdiction: not which tier, but which commission of that tier, in which place. Section 34(2) provides that a complaint shall be instituted in a District Commission within the local limits of whose jurisdiction the opposite party, or each of the opposite parties where there are several, at the time of institution actually and voluntarily resides, or carries on business, or has a branch office, or personally works for gain. Where there are several opposite parties, the complaint may also be instituted where any one of them so resides or carries on business, on the conditions the section prescribes. It may be instituted where the cause of action, wholly or in part, arises. And, in the change that most altered the practical geography of consumer litigation, it may be instituted where the complainant resides or personally works for gain.

Under the Act of 1986 there was no complainant side ground: the buyer of goods from a seller in another State had to follow the seller home, or find a part of the cause of action locally, which in mail order and then in electronic commerce became steadily harder to do honestly. The Act of 2019 states the complainant’s residence and workplace as independent grounds, and the corresponding provisions for the State Commission in Section 47(4) and for the National Commission follow the same pattern. For an online purchase the effect is direct: the buyer files in the buyer’s own district, and the seller who chose to sell into that district answers there. A filer should still plead the territorial ground expressly, identifying which limb of the section is invoked and the facts that support it, because a complaint that is silent on territory invites a preliminary objection that costs a hearing to defeat. Where several opposite parties are joined, a manufacturer in one State, a distributor in a second and a dealer in the complainant’s own district, the local dealer’s presence will usually anchor the complaint at home, and the pleading should say so.

The cause of action ground rewards the same express pleading in the disputes where it bites hardest. In an online purchase, parts of the cause of action arise in the complainant’s district as a matter of the transaction’s own geography: the order is placed from there, the payment is made from there, the goods are delivered, or fail to arrive, there, and the defect is discovered on use there. A complaint that pleads those facts is not straining the section; it is recording where the events occurred, and it displaces the older argument, inherited from the Act of 1986, that a buyer must sue where the seller chose to sit. Conversely, a filer should not assume that any contact with the district will do: a complaint filed where the complainant happens to be travelling, or where a relative received a forwarded parcel, invites the objection and deserves it. The grounds are generous but they are factual, and the discipline of the section is that the pleader must be able to point to the residence, the workplace, the business, the branch or the event within the district, and say which it is.

The two year clock, and the argument about when it starts

Section 69 states the limitation rule for the whole system: a District Commission, a State Commission or the National Commission shall not admit a complaint unless it is filed within two years from the date on which the cause of action has arisen. Two features of the section decide cases. The period runs from the arising of the cause of action, not from the purchase and not from the payment, and identifying that date is a question of fact and law that the complaint should address head on. And the bar is addressed to admission: a time barred complaint is not to be admitted at all, so limitation is examined at the threshold, on the complainant’s own pleading, before the opposite party is ever called upon.

The cause of action in a consumer complaint is the set of facts that entitles the complainant to the relief claimed, and its date depends on the ground. For a defect in goods, it arises when the defect manifests and the trader fails to make it good, and where a trader undertakes repairs during a warranty and fails repeatedly, the commissions have treated the grievance as a continuing one, renewed by each failure, rather than frozen at the date of the first breakdown. For a deficiency in service, it arises when the service should have been performed and was not, or was performed deficiently: the date possession of a flat was promised and not delivered, the date an insurer repudiated a claim, the date a course of treatment concluded. A repudiation letter is the clearest starting point in insurance complaints, because it is the moment the deficiency crystallises into a refusal, and a complainant who dates the complaint from the original loss rather than the repudiation may plead himself out of time. Where the wrong is genuinely continuing, a subsisting failure to deliver, to refund, or to repair, the complaint should say so in terms and plead the dates that show the failure continuing into the two year window.

Section 69(2) softens the rule without dissolving it. A complaint may be entertained after the two years if the complainant satisfies the commission that there was sufficient cause for not filing within the period, and the commission must record its reasons for condoning the delay. The discipline the Supreme Court imposed on the corresponding provision of the Act of 1986, in State Bank of India v B.S. Agricultural Industries (I), (2009) 5 SCC 121, states the approach the commissions follow: the limitation provision is mandatory in character, the commission is required to examine the question of limitation before admitting a complaint, and condonation is not a matter of course but a discretion to be exercised on sufficient cause shown by the applicant, tested against the explanation actually offered. An explanation that the complainant was pursuing the trader in correspondence may or may not suffice, depending on its dates and its diligence; an explanation that the complainant did not know of the remedy, or was waiting in the hope the trader would relent, is the kind that routinely fails. The practical rules write themselves. File within two years of the earliest date that could be fixed as the cause of action, treating every later date as a concession to be argued for rather than a right. If delay is unavoidable, file a separate application for condonation with the complaint, sworn to an affidavit, setting out the chronology and the cause, because the commission cannot condone a delay that has not been explained. And count the period spent in a wrong forum, or in negotiation, as spent, because nothing in the Act stops the clock while the complainant is being reasonable.

Two refinements complete the limitation picture, and both are argued often enough to be worth stating before they are needed. The first concerns defects and injuries that declare themselves late. The period runs from the arising of the cause of action, and where a defect is latent, a concealed fault in a machine that manifests after two years of trouble free running, or an injury attributable to a service that could not reasonably have been connected to the service when it occurred, commissions have had to decide whether the cause of action arose at the transaction or at the manifestation. The safer course for a filer is to plead the manifestation date with the facts that support it, the first symptom, the expert finding, the correspondence that followed, and to file within two years of the earliest date on which the grievance was knowable in substance, treating any discovery argument as a fallback to be proved rather than as the plan. The second refinement is that the condonation discipline of Section 69 is not confined to original complaints. The appeal provisions carry their own periods, forty five days and thirty days, and their own condonation powers, and appellate commissions apply the same sufficient cause test to a late appeal that Section 69(2) applies to a late complaint: the explanation must cover the whole of the delay, and a diary of dates, kept from the day the order was received, is the material from which a sufficient cause is built. A complainant who has won below and receives an appeal notice should read the appeal’s delay, if any, with the same suspicion the commission will.

Assembling the complaint: documents, drafting and the prayer

A consumer complaint is proved out of its annexures. The commission decides on affidavit and documentary evidence under Section 38(6), oral examination being the exception, so the file assembled before filing is, in substance, the case. The core documents recur across grievance types: the invoice, bill or receipt that establishes the consideration paid, which also fixes the pecuniary tier; the contract, booking form, policy or agreement that records what was promised; the warranty or guarantee card where the complaint rests on one; the correspondence with the trader or service provider, including emails, letters and the trader’s replies, which establishes that the defect or deficiency was brought to notice and not made good; the payment records, bank statements, card records or wallet records, that corroborate the transaction; and any expert or repair record, job cards from authorised service centres, inspection notes, a treating record in a services case, that speaks to the defect or the deficiency. A legal notice sent before filing is not a statutory precondition to a consumer complaint, and a complainant is not required to serve one; but a notice that fixes the trader with the grievance, demands a specified remedy and is met with silence or refusal is among the most useful documents in the file, because it dates the cause of action, demonstrates the failure to make good, and costs nothing but a stamp.

Keeping this file in order is a practical problem before it is a legal one, because the documents arrive in mixed forms: a paper invoice, a warranty sent as a spreadsheet, terms delivered as a document file, a trail of email. A filer who expects to open, read and reformat these on the day of drafting will find an office file viewer for spreadsheets, documents and presentations the simplest way to work through the set without the originating software, and the habit worth forming is a single folder, physical or electronic, in which the invoice, the warranty, the correspondence, the payment record and the acknowledgement of the complaint itself are kept together, since those five items are what every later stage, from admission to execution, will ask for.

The complaint itself is not a technical pleading. It may be written on plain paper; no stamp paper is required, no particular form is prescribed by the Act, and the commissions’ registries work from the substance. What it must contain is fixed by the logic of the procedure rather than by a schedule: the name, description and address of the complainant and of each opposite party, so far as they can be ascertained; the facts constituting the cause of action and when it arose, pleaded with dates; the ground under Section 2(6) into which the complaint falls, and the facts that bring it there; the consideration paid, stated as a figure and supported by the receipts, because the tier depends on it; the territorial ground relied on; a statement, where the purchase could be characterised as commercial, of the facts that take it outside the commercial purpose exclusion; and the relief claimed, set out as a prayer that asks for orders the commission is empowered to make. The prayer deserves the care usually reserved for the facts. A commission can order the Section 39 reliefs and no others, so a prayer should ask for them in their own terms: removal of the defect, replacement, refund of the price with interest, compensation quantified under heads the complainant can explain, discontinuance of an unfair practice, and costs. A prayer that asks for relief the statute does not contain, or that omits compensation for the harassment and expense the complaint narrates, cannot be repaired by the commission’s generosity at the hearing. The complaint is accompanied by the documentary evidence in support and by an affidavit verifying its contents, and the registry practice of the commissions is to require the complaint in sets, three sets for a District or State Commission and four for the National Commission, with additional sets for each opposite party, a detail the filer should confirm with the registry or the portal at the time of filing since the requirement is one of practice under the regulations rather than of the Act itself.

The complaint on paper: walking through the draft

The anatomy of a sound complaint is best shown in sequence, because each part answers a question the commission is required to ask. The draft opens with the cause title: the name and address of the complainant, the names and addresses of the opposite parties, and the designation of the commission, District, State or National, before which it is filed, with a synopsis of the complaint’s nature in a line. The first substantive paragraphs array the parties and the transaction: what the complainant bought or hired, from whom, when, and for what consideration, with the invoice and the agreement annexed at the point where they are first mentioned, so that the bench meets each document as the narrative calls for it. A jurisdiction paragraph follows, and it should be drafted as the commission will test it: the consideration paid stated as a figure and brought within the operative band, the territorial ground named from Section 34(2) with its supporting facts, and, where the purchase could be characterised as commercial, the facts of personal or livelihood use stated in terms. The facts are then pleaded chronologically, each paragraph carrying one event and its date: the purchase, the defect or the failure, the complaint made to the trader, the repair attempts or the correspondence, the refusal or the silence that completed the grievance. Chronology is not a stylistic preference; it is how the limitation paragraph that follows is proved, and a complaint whose dates must be excavated from its annexures has made its own admission harder.

The ground paragraph names the limb of Section 2(6) relied on and ties it to the facts pleaded, in a sentence of the form: the facts above constitute a deficiency in service, in that the opposite party undertook to deliver possession by a stated date and has neither delivered nor refunded. The limitation paragraph states the date the cause of action arose, brings the filing within two years of it, and, in a continuing default, says so and gives the dates that show the default subsisting into the period. The prayer then claims the Section 39 reliefs in order: the principal relief, refund or replacement or possession, interest with its rate and start date, compensation quantified under its heads, discontinuance where a practice is impugned, and costs. The complaint closes with the verification and the affidavit, in which the complainant swears to the facts within personal knowledge and identifies the documents relied on, and with the list of annexures. Nothing in this anatomy is ornamental. A draft built on it can be checked, by its own author, against the four threshold failures in minutes, because each failure corresponds to a paragraph: status to the transaction paragraphs, limitation to the chronology and the limitation paragraph, forum to the jurisdiction paragraph, and character to the ground paragraph.

Registry scrutiny: the defect stage before admission

Between filing and admission sits a stage the Act barely mentions and the regulations govern, and it consumes more first time filings than any contested objection. On presentation, the complaint is scrutinised by the commission’s registry under the Consumer Protection (General) Regulations, 2020, which regulate the filing, numbering and scrutiny practice of the commissions: the registry checks the particulars of the parties, the computation and payment of the fee, the number of sets, the annexures and the affidavit, and records the objections, the defect memo, that the filer must answer. Typical defects are mundane and therefore curable: an opposite party’s address incomplete, the fee short by a band, an annexure missing or illegible, the affidavit unattested, the sets short by one. The filer is given time to cure the defects, and a complaint whose defects are cured proceeds to admission with its original filing date intact, which matters where limitation is close. A complaint whose defects are not cured is placed before the commission, and the consequence connects to the discipline of Section 36: rejection, where it comes, follows a hearing, and the filer who attends, cures what can be cured on the spot and seeks time for the rest is rarely the filer whose complaint is rejected. The practical rules are unglamorous. Keep the registry’s defect memo with the complaint papers, answer every objection in writing on the memo itself, retain the stamped acknowledgement of the original filing, and diarise the cure date with the same seriousness as a hearing date, because a defect left uncured is the one route by which a well founded complaint dies without any judge having read it.

What filing costs: the fee schedule stated exactly

The fee for a complaint is prescribed by Rule 7 of the Consumer Protection (Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions) Rules, 2020, and it is charged on the same figure that fixes the tier, the value of the goods or services paid as consideration. For a consideration up to Rs 5 lakh, the fee is nil: the smallest complaints, which are numerically the bulk of the system, are free to file. Above Rs 5 lakh and up to Rs 10 lakh, the fee is Rs 200. Above Rs 10 lakh and up to Rs 20 lakh, it is Rs 400. Above Rs 20 lakh and up to Rs 50 lakh, it is Rs 1,000. Above Rs 50 lakh and up to Rs 1 crore, it is Rs 2,000. Above Rs 1 crore and up to Rs 2 crore, it is Rs 2,500. Above Rs 2 crore and up to Rs 4 crore, it is Rs 3,000; above Rs 4 crore and up to Rs 6 crore, Rs 4,000; above Rs 6 crore and up to Rs 8 crore, Rs 5,000; above Rs 8 crore and up to Rs 10 crore, Rs 6,000; and above Rs 10 crore, Rs 7,500. The fee may be paid by crossed demand draft or postal order in favour of the President of the District Commission or the Registrar of the State or National Commission, or through electronic mode where the commission has made that arrangement, and the fees collected are credited to the Consumer Welfare Fund. Two implications are worth stating, because published accounts routinely obscure both. The fee does not rise with the compensation claimed: a complainant who claims a large sum in compensation on a modest purchase pays the fee of the purchase, not of the claim. And the schedule is deliberately set far below the ad valorem court fees of a civil suit, which is why the often repeated statement that consumer litigation is expensive at the point of entry is wrong: the costs of a consumer case are the costs of time, of evidence and, where engaged, of professional help, and not the fee.

The fee has two further features a filer should register. It is charged per complaint on the consideration, and not per complainant or per opposite party, so a complaint filed jointly by several buyers of the same project, or on behalf of numerous consumers with the same interest, is charged on the consideration that founds it and not multiplied by the number of names on the cause title. And it is not refunded because the complaint fails, nor increased because it succeeds: the regime’s economy is that the State carries the cost of the forum and the filer carries the cost of the filer’s own preparation, which is the opposite of the civil court model in which the plaint fee scales with the claim and the loser may be visited with the winner’s costs in full. A filer moving between the two systems should therefore not import civil court expectations in either direction: entry to the consumer forum is nearly free, and victory in it does not carry a costs indemnity of the civil kind.

Filing in person, by post and online

A complaint may be filed in person at the registry of the commission, by post, through an authorised agent, or electronically. The electronic route is the development that changed the system’s reach. The Consumer Protection (Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions) Rules, 2020 provided for the filing of complaints electronically, and the e-Daakhil portal, launched on 7 September 2020 under the aegis of the National Commission, was built for that purpose: a complainant or an advocate registers with authentication by a one time password on a mobile phone or an activation link on an email address, completes the complaint form, uploads the documents, pays the fee online, and tracks the matter thereafter, and hearings by video conference became part of the same design. The portal was rolled out commission by commission and State by State until it covered the country, and the Department of Consumer Affairs has since consolidated the filing, tracking and case services of the commissions into the e-Jagriti platform. Because the portal’s name, interface and coverage have changed once already and will change again, the durable instruction is the one the registry itself gives: confirm the portal in use, the file formats it accepts and the fee payable on it before filing, and treat any printed walkthrough of its screens, including this one, as a description of the process rather than of the buttons. The process itself is stable: register, complete the particulars of the parties and the complaint, upload the complaint and the documents as scanned files, pay the fee, receive the acknowledgement and the case number, and cure any defect the registry notifies, within the time it allows.

Filing at the higher tiers: the same machinery, a larger room

Most complaints begin and end at the District Commission, but the filer whose consideration carries the case to the State Commission or the National Commission should know that the machinery does not change its nature with its size. A complaint within the State Commission’s original jurisdiction is presented to that commission and travels through the same stages, admission under the corresponding provisions of Section 49, the version in thirty plus fifteen days, affidavit evidence, the laboratory route where goods are in issue, and an order with the Section 39 reliefs, and the same is true of an original complaint before the National Commission under Section 59, which applies the complaint procedure of Sections 35 to 39 to its own proceedings. The differences are of scale and of practice. The stakes bring representation on both sides as a matter of course, written arguments grow longer, and the benches expect the record to be complete at filing in a way a district registry may forgive and a national one will not. The National Commission also holds sittings away from its seat through circuit arrangements notified for the purpose, so a filer should check where the matter will in fact be heard before assuming repeated travel to the capital. What does not change is the discipline this article has described: the tier computed on consideration, the grounds named from Section 2(6), the two years of Section 69, and the thresholds at admission, because the Act built one procedure and housed it at three levels, and a complaint that passes the four checks at district level passes them, on the same pleading, at any level of the system.

The complaint checklist

The table below compresses the whole procedure into the sequence a filer actually follows. Each row gives the step, what the governing provision requires, the period the law allows or prescribes, and the error that most often defeats the step. It assumes the decisions argued in the sections around it: status checked, tier computed on consideration paid, territory pleaded, limitation counted from the earliest defensible date.

Step	What is required	The period	The commonest error
Confirm consumer status	Goods or services for consideration, not for resale or a commercial purpose; livelihood use pleaded where relevant	Before filing	Assuming a business purchase qualifies without pleading the facts of use
Choose the tier	Compute the value of goods or services paid as consideration	Before filing	Measuring by the compensation claimed instead of the consideration paid
Apply the operative bands	District up to Rs 50 lakh, State above Rs 50 lakh to Rs 2 crore, National above Rs 2 crore, under the Jurisdiction Rules 2021	As revised by rules	Filing on the bands printed in the Act as enacted
Choose the place	A ground in Section 34(2): opposite party’s residence or business, cause of action, or complainant’s residence or workplace	At filing	Omitting to plead the territorial ground
Count limitation	Two years from the arising of the cause of action under Section 69	Two years	Dating the cause of action from the purchase rather than the failure or repudiation
Prepare a condonation application	Sufficient cause shown on affidavit, with the chronology, where the two years have run	With the complaint	Filing late with no explanation and expecting indulgence
Assemble the documents	Invoice, contract or policy, warranty, correspondence, payment records, repair or expert records	Before filing	Filing first and promising documents later, in a procedure decided on documents
Draft the complaint and prayer	Parties, dated facts, the Section 2(6) ground, the consideration figure, the territorial ground, relief within Section 39	Before filing	Asking for relief the commission has no power to grant
Pay the fee	Rule 7 schedule on consideration paid; nil up to Rs 5 lakh; draft, postal order or electronic payment	At filing	Paying on the compensation claimed and overpaying, or short paying the band
File	In person, by post, through an agent, or electronically on the portal in use; sets as the registry requires	At filing	Using a superseded portal address or the wrong number of sets
Admission	Admissibility ordinarily decided within twenty one days of filing under Section 36; deemed admitted if not decided	Twenty one days	Treating silence after filing as rejection and abandoning the complaint
Notice and version	Copy sent to the opposite party within twenty one days of admission; version within thirty days, extendable by fifteen at most	Thirty plus fifteen days	Expecting the commission to extend the opposite party’s time indefinitely, or one’s own
Evidence and testing	Affidavit and documentary evidence under Section 38(6); laboratory report within forty five days where goods are tested	Forty five days for a laboratory report	Arriving with unsworn assertions where the other side has filed affidavits
Mediation option	Consent in writing within five days of the commission’s direction under Section 37; settlement recorded under Section 81	Order within seven days of the settlement report	Consenting without understanding that no appeal lies against the settlement order
The order	Relief under Section 39: removal of defect, replacement, refund with interest, compensation, discontinuance, corrective advertisement, costs	Endeavour of three months from notice, five where testing is required	Promising oneself the statutory endeavour as if it were a deadline
Appeal	State Commission within forty five days of a District order; National within thirty days of a State order; Supreme Court within thirty days of a National order; fifty per cent deposit by an appellant ordered to pay	Forty five, thirty and thirty days	Missing that the deposit is a condition of the appeal being entertained
Execution	Enforcement as a decree under Section 71; non compliance an offence under Section 72	On default	Treating the order as self executing and never filing for execution

Admission: the twenty one day gate

Section 36 governs the front of the case. Every proceeding before a District Commission is conducted by its President and at least one member sitting together. On receipt of a complaint under Section 35, the commission may by order admit the complaint for being proceeded with, or reject it. Two provisos discipline that choice, and both protect the filer. A complaint shall not be rejected unless an opportunity of being heard has been given to the complainant, so a registry objection or a perceived defect in the pleading cannot be converted into a rejection behind the complainant’s back; the filer is entitled to be heard on admission, and should use the hearing to repair the pleading rather than to argue the merits. And the admissibility of the complaint shall ordinarily be decided within twenty one days from the date on which the complaint was filed. Section 36(3) completes the discipline: where the commission does not decide admissibility within that period, the complaint shall be deemed to have been admitted. The deeming provision is the answer to the commonest misreading of silence in this system. A filer who hears nothing after three weeks does not have a rejected complaint; the filer has an admitted one, and the next step, the issue of notice to the opposite party, is the commission’s to take.

Can a complaint be rejected without hearing the complainant?

No. Section 36(2) forbids rejection of a complaint unless the complainant has first been given an opportunity of being heard, and the question of admissibility must ordinarily be decided within twenty one days of filing. If the commission does not decide within that period, Section 36(3) deems the complaint to have been admitted.

What is examined at admission is the threshold, and the threshold is the four failures with which this article began: whether the complainant is a consumer, whether the complaint discloses a ground under Section 2(6), whether the commission has pecuniary and territorial jurisdiction on the pleading’s own figures, and whether the complaint is within the two years of Section 69 or carries an explanation of delay fit to be considered. A rejection at this stage is an appealable order, and it is also usually a self inflicted one, because each of the four inquiries is answered by material the filer controls. The corresponding provisions apply the same admission discipline, with the modifications the sections prescribe, to complaints before the State Commission under Section 49 and the National Commission under Section 59, the latter applying Sections 35 to 39 to its own proceedings in terms.

The admission hearing itself should be argued for what it is. It is not the trial of the complaint, and the complainant who opens the merits at length spends credibility the hearing does not require: the bench is asking whether the pleading discloses a consumer, a ground, a forum and a period, and the answers live in the jurisdiction paragraph, the ground paragraph and the chronology. Where the bench identifies a defect in the pleading, the productive response is repair rather than resistance: an amendment that pleads the livelihood facts behind a questioned purchase, a condonation application put in proper form where the dates are pressed, a recomputation of the consideration where the tier is doubted. A complainant who meets a threshold objection with the document or the amendment that answers it converts the most dangerous hearing of the case into the shortest, and a complainant against whom the objection is incurable learns it at admission, with an appealable order and the limitation position still capable of assessment, rather than after years of hearing. The hearing’s other lesson runs the other way: where the twenty one days pass without any order, the complainant should place the deeming provision of Section 36(3) on the record and press for the issue of notice, because an admitted complaint that is never served is a right the registry has not yet set in motion, and the statute gives the filer the text to set it moving.

The version, the evidence and the laboratory

Once a complaint is admitted, Section 38 drives it forward on a timetable that is unusually unforgiving for Indian procedure, and both sides should understand that the timetable is the case. Where the complaint relates to goods, the commission shall refer a copy of the admitted complaint to the opposite party within twenty one days of admission, directing it to give its version of the case within thirty days, or such extended period not exceeding fifteen days as the commission may grant. For services complaints, Section 38(3) prescribes the same reference and the same thirty plus fifteen structure. The outer limit is therefore forty five days from the opposite party’s receipt of the notice with the complaint, and it is a hard limit. The Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held, in New India Assurance Company Limited v Hilli Multipurpose Cold Storage Private Limited, (2020) 5 SCC 757, that a consumer forum has no power to extend the time for the opposite party’s version beyond the fifteen days the statute allows in addition to the thirty, and that the period runs from the receipt of the notice accompanied by the copy of the complaint. That decision was given on the identically worded provision of the Act of 1986, and its reasoning governs the same words in Section 38: a version filed late is liable not to be taken on record, and the commission proceeds on the material before it. If the opposite party denies or disputes the allegations, the commission settles the dispute on the evidence the parties bring to its notice. If the opposite party omits or fails to act within the time given, the commission proceeds ex parte on the complainant’s evidence. And if the complainant fails to appear on the date of hearing, the commission decides the complaint on merits on the material available, which is the statute’s quiet warning that an absent complainant does not earn an adjournment but a decision.

Evidence in a consumer case is evidence on paper. Section 38(6) requires every complaint to be heard on the basis of affidavit and documentary evidence placed on record, and permits examination of parties in person or through video conferencing only where an application is made and sufficient cause is shown, with reasons recorded. For the conduct of the proceeding the commission holds specified powers of a civil court under Section 38(9): summoning and enforcing attendance and examining witnesses on oath, requiring discovery and production of documents, receiving evidence on affidavits, requisitioning laboratory reports, and issuing commissions for the examination of witnesses or documents. Interim orders may be passed where necessary under Section 38(8), and Section 38(4) arms the commission to direct an electronic service provider to furnish information, documents or records, a provision of obvious use against marketplace sellers. Adjournments are disciplined by the provisos to Section 38(7): none shall ordinarily be granted unless sufficient cause is shown and the reasons recorded in writing, with orders as to the costs occasioned.

Where the complaint alleges a defect in goods that cannot be determined without analysis or test, Section 38(2) supplies a self contained code. The commission obtains a sample of the goods from the complainant, seals and authenticates it, and refers it to the appropriate laboratory, which must report within forty five days of receipt of the reference or within an extended period the commission grants. Before the reference, the complainant deposits the specified fee for the analysis to the credit of the commission, which remits it to the laboratory; the report is copied to the opposite party with the commission’s remarks; either side may file written objections to the findings or to the method; and both sides are heard on the report and the objections before the commission orders under Section 39. The definition of an appropriate laboratory in Section 2(2) covers laboratories recognised by the Central or a State Government and those established or maintained under law with government aid. The practice points are plain. A defect that exists only in the complainant’s assertion will be tested, and a complainant who cannot produce the goods, or whose goods have been repaired, consumed or discarded, has destroyed the subject matter of the strongest evidence the procedure offers. Preserve the goods, the packaging and the batch identifiers, and expect the fee for testing to be a deposit, recoverable in the event of success through the costs the commission may award.

The hearing: argument on paper, and the powers in reserve

A consumer hearing disappoints anyone expecting a trial, and understanding its character in advance is worth more than any forensic skill. The case is argued on the record built under Section 38: the complaint and its annexures, the version, the affidavits of evidence, the laboratory report where there is one, and written arguments, which the commissions expect and which carry a weight out of proportion to their length because the bench reads the file before it hears the parties. The hearing itself is short, directed to the points the record leaves open, and the filer who uses it to read the complaint aloud has wasted it; the filer who uses it to answer the bench’s stated difficulty, and to point to the page of the record that answers it, has used it as it is meant to be used. Examination of a party or a witness in person, or through video conferencing, is available only on an application showing sufficient cause, with reasons recorded under Section 38(6), and a filer whose case depends on a contested conversation or a disputed representation should make that application early and support it with the reason the paper record cannot carry the point, rather than assuming oral evidence will be permitted as a matter of course.

Around the hearing stand powers the filer should know exist, because several of them solve problems that otherwise end complaints. Section 38(8) empowers the commission to pass interim orders as it considers necessary in the course of the proceeding, and the filer facing an ongoing harm, a service about to be disconnected, a vehicle retained by a workshop, a demolition or dispossession threatened by a builder, should ask for interim protection in the complaint itself rather than waiting for the final order. Section 38(9) confers the listed powers of a civil court, summoning witnesses, discovery and production of documents, evidence on affidavits, requisition of laboratory reports and commissions for examination, and the filer who needs a document that sits in the opposite party’s hands, the internal repair record, the surveyor’s report behind an insurance repudiation, should invoke the discovery power by a specific application naming the document and its relevance, rather than complaining at the final hearing that the other side holds the proof. Section 38(4), already noted, lets the commission direct an electronic service provider to place information, documents or records before it. And the adjournment discipline of Section 38(7), sufficient cause shown, reasons recorded, costs imposed where the adjournment occasions them, cuts both ways: it protects the filer against a represented opponent’s delay, and it punishes the filer who treats a hearing date as provisional. The proceeding ends in an order signed by the President and the member or members who conducted it, and the filer’s remaining tasks after pronouncement are administrative and urgent in equal measure: obtain the order, check it against the prayer, and start the clocks for appeal, review and execution that the later sections of this article describe.

Mediation: the settlement track inside the case

The Act of 2019 built a settlement track into the complaint itself, and a filer meets it early. Under Section 37, at the first hearing of the complaint after its admission, or at any later stage, if it appears to the commission that there exist elements of a settlement which may be acceptable to the parties, the commission may direct the parties to give their consent in writing, within five days, to have the dispute settled by mediation under Chapter V of the Act, in cases other than those the rules prescribe as unfit for reference. Where both parties consent in writing, the commission shall, within five days of receiving the consent, refer the matter for mediation, and Chapter V takes over: mediation cells are attached to the commissions under Section 74, mediators are empanelled under Section 75 and nominated under Section 76, and the process is conducted in the manner the Mediation Rules and Regulations of 2020 prescribe. The rules withdraw specified categories from reference altogether, among them matters involving serious allegations of fraud, forgery, impersonation or coercion, criminal and non compoundable offences, and specified classes of medical negligence claim, so a complainant whose case turns on such an allegation will not be pressed toward the mediation cell.

The outcomes are fixed by Sections 80 and 81. If agreement is reached, on all the issues or on some of them, the terms are reduced to writing and signed by the parties or their authorised representatives, and the mediator forwards the signed agreement with a settlement report to the commission, which shall, within seven days of receiving the report, pass an order recording the settlement and dispose of the matter accordingly. A partial settlement is recorded as to the issues settled, and the commission continues to hear the rest. If no agreement is reached, the mediator reports accordingly and the commission continues to hear all the issues, and nothing said in the mediation is a concession in the hearing. The decisive feature stands in Section 41 and its counterparts: no appeal lies against an order passed under Section 81(1) recording a settlement. A mediated order is therefore final in a way an adjudicated order is not, and the bargain must be assessed as a final one: it buys speed, certainty, a relationship preserved where the parties must deal again, and an end to the appeal ladder, and it costs the possibility of a better outcome on adjudication and of any appeal if the bargain sours. A complainant offered mediation should price the offer against the relief Section 39 could give, not against the amount originally demanded, and should remember that consent cannot be withdrawn after the order records the settlement.

The mechanics deserve a paragraph, because mediation fails in practice on logistics more often than on principle. The mediation cell attached to the commission maintains the panel of mediators empanelled under Section 75, a mediator is nominated from the panel under Section 76, and the parties are expected to appear, in person or through representatives authorised to settle, since a mediation attended by a representative without authority to agree is a postponement wearing the costume of a settlement attempt. The mediator’s function is facilitative: the mediator does not decide, does not record evidence and does not report the content of the parties’ positions to the commission beyond the fact of settlement or its failure, which is what makes candour inside the process safe. Where the parties reach terms, those terms should be complete when signed: the amount, the date or dates of payment, what happens on default, and the disposal of the complaint itself, because the order that follows under Section 81 records the agreement as the parties made it, and an agreement silent on default leaves the complainant to execute a settlement whose breach it did not price. Where only some issues settle, the order records the settlement on those issues and the commission hears the remainder, and a filer should take care that a partial settlement does not concede, by drafting accident, a fact the remaining hearing needs.

The order: what a commission can actually give

Section 39 lists what a District Commission may direct when it is satisfied that the goods suffer from a defect specified in the complaint, or that the allegations about the services, an unfair trade practice, or a claim for compensation under product liability are proved, and the corresponding findings provisions for the State and National Commissions, Sections 49 and 59, speak in the same terms. The commission may direct the opposite party to remove the defect pointed out by the appropriate laboratory from the goods; to replace the goods with new goods of similar description free from defect; to return the price or the charges paid, with such interest as it decides; to pay compensation for loss or injury suffered by the consumer due to the negligence of the opposite party, with an express power to grant punitive damages in such circumstances as it deems fit; to pay compensation in a product liability action; to remove the defects in goods or the deficiencies in services; to discontinue the unfair or restrictive trade practice and not repeat it; to stop offering hazardous goods for sale, to withdraw them, and to cease manufacturing hazardous goods or offering hazardous services; to issue a corrective advertisement, at its own cost, to neutralise the effect of a misleading advertisement, and to cease and desist from issuing misleading advertisements; and to provide for adequate costs to the parties. Where loss or injury has been suffered by a large number of consumers who cannot be identified conveniently, the commission may direct payment of a sum not less than twenty five per cent of the value of the defective goods sold or services provided to those consumers, the amount being credited under the rules to the Consumer Welfare Fund.

The relief list defines both the power and its realistic limits, and a complainant should read the prayer back against it before filing. The commissions award compensation for harassment, mental agony and expense as a matter of course where the deficiency is proved, on the principle settled for the Act of 1986 in Lucknow Development Authority v M.K. Gupta, (1994) 1 SCC 243, that compensation under the Act is not confined to quantifiable monetary loss. But the commission is a forum of summary procedure deciding on affidavits and documents; it has no machinery for the unravelling of genuinely disputed accounts, for findings of fraud requiring a trial, or for the kind of loss that can only be established through prolonged oral evidence, and the orders it makes are bounded by the proof the file contains. Interest on a refund is discretionary in rate and in start date, compensation is assessed rather than computed, and costs, though available, are modest beside the cost of professional representation in a long case. The filer who understands this drafts a complaint whose every claimed head can be proved from an annexure.

Interest and costs, the two heads filers most often plead badly, follow from the same logic. The Act gives the commission the interest question entirely: on a refund, Section 39 speaks of the price returned with such interest as the commission decides, and on compensation the rate and the starting date are equally matters of discretion, exercised on the pattern the commissions have built up, interest on a builder’s deposits running from the dates of payment in the standard housing case, and interest on an insurance sum from a reasonable interval after the claim fell due. A prayer should therefore ask for interest expressly, name the rate sought and the date from which it is sought, and plead the facts that justify both, because a commission asked for nothing awards nothing under that head, and a commission asked for interest from an indefensible date discounts the credibility of the prayer as a whole. Costs under Section 39 are real but measured: the provision for adequate costs to the parties is regularly used to reimburse filing expenses, the laboratory deposit and a measure of the expense of pursuing the complaint, and a filer who has kept the receipts of the proceeding itself can claim them; the complainant who expects the commission to indemnify the full market cost of a legal team will be disappointed, which is one more reason the economics of representation, addressed later in this article, should be settled before the complaint grows.

How long a case takes: the statutory endeavour and the recorded reality

The Act’s own timetable, assembled from the sections described so far, is brisk: admissibility ordinarily decided within twenty one days of filing, the complaint copy sent to the opposite party within twenty one days of admission, the version within thirty days and fifteen more at most, a laboratory report within forty five days of the reference, and, over the whole, Section 38(7) provides that every complaint shall be disposed of as expeditiously as possible and that endeavour shall be made to decide it within three months from the date of receipt of notice by the opposite party where no analysis or testing of the goods is required, and within five months where it is. A complaint disposed of outside those periods is not invalid; the commission must record in writing the reasons for the delay at the time of disposal. The three and five month figures are endeavours, not limitations, and no order falls because they were exceeded.

Candour requires the second half of that account. The disposal endeavour is exceeded in a large share of cases, and the reasons are structural and are a matter of public record rather than of anecdote. The Department of Consumer Affairs answers questions in Parliament on the working of the commissions, and the picture those answers and the commissions’ own returns consistently give is of benches sitting below sanctioned strength because appointments of Presidents and members are delayed by the appointing governments, of district commissions carrying arrears that the sitting strength cannot clear, and of pendency that the National Commission must report under Section 70 and that no year’s disposals have brought down to the scale the statute imagines. Section 32 addresses one part of the problem: where a member is unable to conduct a proceeding to completion, its President and the other member continue from the stage reached, and a vacancy does not by itself stall a bench’s constitution, but no provision can manufacture members whom governments have not appointed. The honest advice to a filer is therefore double. File as if the statutory timetable will be kept, because the steps within the complainant’s control, a complete file, prompt replies, attendance on every date, are the steps that place the complaint in the class that finishes early. And plan as if it will not, because a grievance whose value depends on a decision within five months should be assessed, before filing, against the alternative routes, negotiation, the sectoral ombudsman where one exists, and mediation within the case itself.

One structural answer to pendency runs alongside the commissions and is worth the filer’s attention, because it converts the same complaint into a settlement with the force of a decree. The legal services authorities periodically take up pending and pre-litigation consumer disputes in Lok Adalats, where a bench of the Lok Adalat settles the dispute by agreement between the parties and passes an award that, under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, is deemed a decree of a civil court and is final, with no appeal against it. A complainant whose case is listed for a Lok Adalat should approach it as a negotiation with a deadline and a binding outcome: the award closes the dispute on the terms agreed, which is its virtue where the terms are right and its danger where they are accepted merely to end the waiting. Nothing compels settlement; a matter that does not settle returns to the commission’s board and continues, and the statements made in the attempt are not evidence in the hearing. For a complaint that is strong on documents and weak only in the patience of its owner, a Lok Adalat settlement at a modest discount is frequently the economically correct end, and for a complaint whose value lies in a precedent or a practice discontinued, it is not.

Enforcement: turning an order into money

An order in the complainant’s favour is not self executing, and the stage at which successful complainants most often stall is the stage after they have won. Section 68 makes an order final where no appeal is preferred against it. Section 71 provides the machinery: every order of a District Commission, a State Commission or the 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 before it, and the provisions of Order XXI of the Code of Civil Procedure apply, as far as may be, with references to a decree read as references to the order. The decree holder’s remedies follow from that incorporation: attachment and sale of the judgment debtor’s property, and the other modes of execution the Code provides, set in motion by an execution application to the commission that passed the order. The application should be filed promptly, should identify the order, the amount unpaid and the mode of execution sought, and should be pursued on its dates with the same discipline as the complaint, because an execution left unprosecuted sleeps in the same registry as the complaints behind it.

Behind the decree stands a criminal sanction, and it is the feature of the regime that traders consistently underestimate until it is invoked. Section 72(1) makes failure to comply with any order of a District, State or National Commission an offence punishable with imprisonment for a term that shall not be less than one month and may extend to three years, or with a fine that shall not be less than Rs 25,000 and may extend to Rs 1 lakh, or with both. The commission itself has the powers of a Judicial Magistrate of the first class for the trial of the offence, and tries it summarily, and an appeal against a penalty order lies under Section 73. The sanction is not automatic and it is not a substitute for execution: it must be invoked, and commissions deploy it against contumacious default rather than against a debtor who cannot pay. But its existence alters the negotiation after judgment. A trader who could ignore a decree of a civil court for years at the cost of interest faces, in this regime, a personal consequence for disobedience, and the complainant’s execution application and the prospect of Section 72 together are the pressure that converts most orders into payment.

Execution has its own discipline, and it rewards the same qualities as the complaint. The application is made to the commission that passed the order, and it should annex the order, compute the amount due on the date of the application, interest and costs included as the order awards them, and identify, so far as the decree holder can, the property or the bank accounts against which execution is sought, because Order XXI proceeds against identified assets and a decree holder who can point to the judgment debtor’s property shortens the proceeding by months. The modes the Code supplies, and which Section 71 makes available, include attachment and sale of movable and immovable property, attachment of debts and accounts owed to the judgment debtor, and, in the last resort and within the Code’s own safeguards, arrest and detention of the judgment debtor. Where the defaulter is a company, execution proceeds against the company’s assets, and the penal route of Section 72 is invoked against the failure to comply itself, which is why the service of the order and the record of its receipt matter: a prosecution for non compliance begins from proof that the order was made, was communicated and was disobeyed. An order that fixes a date for compliance should be executed from that date; an order that is silent should still be pursued promptly, because the decree holder who sleeps teaches the judgment debtor that the order was the end of the matter, and in this regime the order is only the end of the beginning.

Appeals, review and revision: the ladder and its tolls

The appeal ladder is short, fixed and expensive to miss. From an order of the District Commission, Section 41 gives an appeal to the State Commission on grounds of fact or law within forty five days from the date of the order, and the State Commission may entertain a late appeal if satisfied there was sufficient cause for the delay. From an order of the State Commission in its original jurisdiction, Section 51 gives an appeal to the National Commission within thirty days. From an order of the National Commission in its original jurisdiction, Section 67 gives an appeal to the Supreme Court within thirty days. Each tier’s appeal is conditioned by a toll that reproduces the Section 41 pattern: where the appellant is a person required to pay an amount under the order appealed against, no appeal shall be entertained unless the appellant has deposited fifty per cent of that amount in the prescribed manner. The deposit is a condition of entertainment, not a technicality: an appeal filed without it is not heard until it is made good, and the fifty per cent is computed on the amount ordered, not on the amount the appellant concedes. The consumer who has won pays nothing to defend the order; the deposit falls on the party ordered to pay, which is the provision’s design, to prevent the appeal being used as an instrument of delay by a debtor who has not parted with anything.

Two qualifications complete the ladder. The first is transition. Complaints instituted under the Act of 1986 before the Act of 2019 commenced on 20 July 2020 continue under the old Act: the Supreme Court held in Neena Aneja v Jai Prakash Associates Limited, (2022) 2 SCC 161, that all proceedings instituted before that date under the Act of 1986 shall continue to be heard by the fora corresponding to those designated under the Act of 1986, and shall not be transferred by reference to the new pecuniary limits, resting the conclusion on the savings in Section 107 of the Act of 2019 and on Section 6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897, which preserves rights accrued under a repealed enactment. Appeals in those proceedings carry the deposit regime of the Act that governs them, and under the Act of 1986 the deposit was capped: fifty per cent of the amount ordered or Rs 25,000 on an appeal to the State Commission, Rs 35,000 on an appeal to the National Commission and Rs 50,000 on an appeal to the Supreme Court, whichever was less, ceilings introduced by the Amendment Act 62 of 2002. The uncapped fifty per cent deposit of the Act of 2019 therefore does not reach a complaint instituted before its commencement, because the right of appeal, and the conditions attached to it, accrued when the proceeding was instituted. A filer holding an old Act order should identify which regime governs an appeal against it before computing the deposit, because the difference between fifty per cent and the ceiling is, in a large case, the difference between an appeal that can be filed and one that cannot.

The second qualification is that appeal is not the only corrective route, and for some errors it is not the right one. Each commission may review its own order where there is an error apparent on the face of the record, on an application made within thirty days of the order: Section 40 for the District Commission, Section 50 for the State Commission and Section 60 for the National Commission, beside the commission’s power to act of its own motion within the same window. Review is not a rehearing and does not lie because the losing side regrets its evidence; it corrects the order that misstates its own record. Above the District Commission, the State Commission also holds a revisional jurisdiction under Section 47(1)(b), to call for the records of a dispute pending before or decided by a District Commission in the State and pass appropriate orders where the District Commission has exercised a jurisdiction not vested in it, failed to exercise a jurisdiction vested in it, or acted illegally or with material irregularity; the National Commission holds the corresponding power over State Commissions under Section 58(1)(b). Revision polices jurisdiction and legality, not findings of fact, and a party whose real grievance is that the evidence was weighed against it belongs in the appeal, within its forty five or thirty days, and not in a revision filed when the appeal period has run.

The conduct of an appeal follows the character of the system: it is decided on the record of the commission below, and the appellate bench reappreciates the evidence and the law for itself, since the appeal under Sections 41, 51 and 67 is on facts and on law alike. New evidence is not a matter of right at that stage, and a party who held back a document below should not expect the appeal to be its second chance to build the record; the grounds of appeal should therefore attack the order as made, its findings, its reasoning on limitation or jurisdiction, its computation of compensation, rather than narrate the grievance afresh. Two practical features dominate. The deposit already described is the gate: fifty per cent of the amount ordered, deposited in the prescribed manner, before the appeal is entertained where the appellant is the party ordered to pay. And the operation of the order during the appeal is a matter the appellant must actively address, by seeking a stay from the appellate commission, since the filing of an appeal does not by itself suspend execution; a decree holder faced with an appeal should equally be ready to press execution where no stay operates. Beyond the statutory ladder, the commissions remain tribunals subject to the supervisory and writ jurisdiction of the High Courts under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution, which the Act does not and cannot oust. That jurisdiction is not a fourth appeal: the High Courts intervene for want of jurisdiction, for denial of natural justice and for errors of the kind that go to the root of the proceeding, and decline to reweigh evidence where the statutory appeal was available and adequate. A party’s realistic map is therefore the ladder first, review for the apparent error, revision for the jurisdictional one, and the writ held in reserve for the case the ladder cannot reach.

Filing without a lawyer, and the help that costs nothing

No provision of the Act requires a complainant to engage a lawyer, and the omission is a design choice rather than an oversight. The complaint may be written on plain paper, presented in person or by an authorised agent, and argued by the complainant; the procedure of affidavit and documents was built for a forum in which the citizen appears without counsel, and commissions conduct their hearings on that assumption every working day. The honest qualification has to be stated in the same breath. A complainant facing a manufacturer, an insurer or a builder will usually face a represented opponent, with counsel who know the registry, the bench’s habits and the points at which an unrepresented case leaks value: a prayer that omits a head of compensation, an affidavit that asserts what the annexures do not prove, a limitation objection conceded by silence. The absence of a requirement is a freedom, not a guarantee of equality, and a complainant with a large claim and a documented case should weigh the cost of advice against the heads of relief that inexpert drafting typically leaves unclaimed.

Is a lawyer required to file a consumer complaint?

No. The Act does not require a lawyer at any stage: the complaint may be filed and argued by the complainant in person or through an authorised agent, and the procedure of documents and affidavits was designed for self representation. Legal aid is available to those who qualify, and representation remains a choice.

Help exists at three levels, and a filer should know all three before paying for any of it. The first is inside the system: the commissions’ registries and the filing portal guide the mechanics, and the National Consumer Helpline, the Department of Consumer Affairs’ pre-litigation channel, will take up a grievance with the trader informally before any complaint exists; a helpline grievance is not a complaint, it decides nothing and, critically, it does not stop the two year clock, so a grievance that the helpline cannot resolve must be converted into a filed complaint inside the limitation period. The second is the legal services machinery: a complainant who cannot afford representation may apply for free legal services, and the entitlements and the application route are set out in the article on the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987. The third is the alternative forum: for grievances against regulated sectors, an insurance company, a bank, an electricity distributor, a telecom provider, a sectoral ombudsman or grievance mechanism may offer a free and faster route than a commission, and the map of those alternatives is drawn in the complete guide to consumer law in India. Section 100 preserves the complainant’s other remedies in parallel: the Act’s provisions are in addition to, and not in derogation of, any other law, so the consumer route does not extinguish a civil claim, a sectoral complaint or a prosecution, though the same relief cannot be recovered twice over.

A fourth level of help costs nothing and is easy to overlook: the voluntary consumer associations whose standing to file Section 35 itself recognises. An established consumer organisation will commonly advise a complainant on whether the grievance fits the Act, assist with the drafting of the complaint and the computation of the tier, and in a suitable case take up the complaint itself, and for a complainant whose difficulty is confidence with procedure rather than money, that assistance answers the real gap. Consumer guidance of this kind does not carry the authority of the commission or of counsel, and its advice should be tested against the Act and the rules in the manner of any other secondary source, but a regime that gives associations standing to complain has signalled that they are part of its machinery, and a filer who has access to one should use it before the complaint is filed rather than after it has been returned.

Is the National Consumer Helpline the same as filing a complaint?

No. The Helpline is a pre-litigation channel of the Department of Consumer Affairs: it registers a grievance and pursues it with the trader informally, and many grievances end there. It makes no order, awards no compensation and, decisively, does not stop the two year limitation period, which only the filing of a complaint before a commission can satisfy.

Frivolous complaints: the screen moved, it did not vanish

A filer who has read accounts of the Act of 1986 will remember a deterrent the new Act does not reproduce. Section 26 of the Act of 1986 provided that where a complaint was found to be frivolous or vexatious, the commission could dismiss it and order the complainant to pay the opposite party costs not exceeding Rs 10,000. The Act of 2019 carries no counterpart to Section 26 in that form: there is no freestanding provision under which a complainant is fined a fixed sum for a complaint that fails. It would be a mistake to read the omission as an invitation. The screening that Section 26 performed after the event is performed in the new design before it, at the admission gate of Section 36, where a complaint that discloses no consumer, no statutory ground and no jurisdiction is rejected after hearing the complainant; and Section 39(1) empowers the commission, in an appropriate case, to provide for adequate costs to the parties, a power that can be and is exercised against a party whose conduct of the proceeding warrants it. The practical position is therefore unchanged in substance and different in route: a speculative complaint is stopped earlier, and a complainant who files responsibly has nothing to fear from the costs jurisdiction, which is aimed at abuse of the process rather than at failure on the merits.

The four threshold failures, checked in advance

The namable claim of this article can be put in one sentence: most consumer complaints fail before they are heard, and they fail on four grounds that the filer, and only the filer, can check in advance. The checks take an afternoon. Is the complainant a consumer, tested against the definition in Section 2(7), with the facts of use pleaded where the purchase could be called commercial, and the livelihood case stated in terms where it applies. Is the complaint inside two years of the cause of action as Section 69 fixes it, counted from the failure or the repudiation rather than from the purchase, and if it is not, is there a condonation application on affidavit with a chronology that amounts to sufficient cause. Is the commission the right one, computed on the consideration actually paid, under the operative bands of the Jurisdiction Rules 2021 rather than the figures printed in the Act as enacted, with the territorial ground pleaded from Section 34(2). And does the complaint allege a defect, a deficiency, an unfair practice, an excessive price, a hazard or product liability, in facts that documents can prove, rather than a contract dispute that belongs in a civil court. A complaint that passes those four gates will be admitted, will be answered, and will be decided on its evidence, which is all the procedure can promise and all it needs to.

One boundary of this article should be stated plainly before the verdict. What is set out here is the general position under the Act and its rules, stated for information; it is not advice on an individual case, and because limitation periods and forum rules are unforgiving of a wrong step taken in good faith, a complainant whose facts sit close to any of the four boundaries should take advice on those facts before filing rather than after a rejection.

A worked audit: one complaint through the four checks

The checks are abstract until they are run against a set of facts, and a single ordinary case shows their working. A buyer purchases a split air conditioner for Rs 68,500 from a dealer in the buyer’s own city, for the buyer’s residence. The unit cools badly from installation; the dealer’s technicians attend three times across the summer, replace a sensor, and finally state in writing that the unit is working to specification. The buyer obtains a report from an independent technician identifying a defective compressor and files a complaint claiming a replacement or a refund, compensation for the season lost, and costs. Run the checks. Status: the purchase is for domestic use in the buyer’s home, no resale and no commercial purpose arises, and the complaint says so in a sentence. Limitation: the cause of action is pleaded from the dealer’s written refusal, the event that completed the grievance, and the filing falls well within two years of it; the purchase date, the installation date and each service visit are pleaded in the chronology, so the commission can see the two years satisfied on any view of the starting point. Forum: the consideration paid is Rs 68,500, which places the complaint before the District Commission under the operative band, and the fee is nil because the consideration does not exceed Rs 5 lakh; territory is the dealer’s business and the buyer’s residence alike, and the complaint pleads both. Character: the ground is a defect in goods under Section 2(6), supported by the job cards, the dealer’s letter and the independent report, and the buyer preserves the unit unrepaired by any other hand so that the laboratory route, if the dealer disputes the diagnosis, has a subject matter to test. The prayer claims replacement with a new unit of similar description or refund of Rs 68,500 with interest from the date of payment, compensation quantified under the heads of the lost season and the expense of the independent report, and costs. Nothing in the case is remarkable, which is the point: it is admitted, answered and decided on its documents because each paragraph of the draft was written against a check, and the four failures were excluded at the kitchen table rather than argued at the bar of the commission.

Closing verdict

The consumer complaint is the most deliberately accessible civil remedy in Indian law: no lawyer required, no court fee of consequence, a forum in the complainant’s own district, a timetable written into the statute, an order enforceable as a decree and backed by a criminal sanction for disobedience. Its accessibility is also its trap, because a procedure that asks little of the filer at the point of entry decides everything at thresholds the filer may never notice: a definition, a date, a figure, a characterisation. The commissions honour the design for the complainant who respects it. File the complaint the threshold can pass, with the receipts counted, the dates pleaded, the ground named and the documents attached, and the machinery the Act built will do the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can an association or a group file a consumer complaint?

Yes. Section 2(5) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 defines a complainant to include a voluntary consumer association registered under any law for the time being in force, and Section 35(1)(b) recognises its right to file, whether or not the affected consumer is its member. A group may also file: Section 35(1)(c) permits one or more consumers, where there are numerous consumers having the same interest, to file on behalf of or for the benefit of all of them, with the permission of the commission, and Section 38(11) applies the representative suit procedure of Order I Rule 8 of the Code of Civil Procedure to such a complaint. A Central or State Government, the Central Authority, a legal heir or representative of a deceased consumer, and a parent or guardian of a minor consumer may likewise file under the same provisions.

Q: What is the time limit for filing a consumer complaint?

Two years. Section 69 of the Act of 2019 provides that a District Commission, a State Commission or the National Commission shall not admit a complaint unless it is filed within two years from the date on which the cause of action arose. The period runs from the arising of the cause of action, which is the failure, the refusal or the repudiation that completes the grievance, and not necessarily from the date of purchase. Section 69(2) permits a complaint to be entertained after the period where the complainant satisfies the commission that there was sufficient cause for the delay, and the commission must record its reasons for condoning it. Condonation is a discretion exercised on the explanation offered, not an entitlement, and the Supreme Court’s discipline under the corresponding provision of the Act of 1986 requires the limitation question to be examined before admission.

Q: Which consumer commission should a complaint go to?

The tier is fixed by the value of the goods or services paid as consideration, and by nothing else: not by the compensation claimed and not by the loss alleged. Under the Consumer Protection (Jurisdiction of the District Commission, the State Commission and the National Commission) Rules, 2021, a complaint where the consideration paid does not exceed Rs 50 lakh goes to the District Commission; where it exceeds Rs 50 lakh and does not exceed Rs 2 crore, to the State Commission; and where it exceeds Rs 2 crore, to the National Commission. The figures printed in Sections 34, 47 and 58 of the Act as enacted, Rs 1 crore and Rs 10 crore, were revised by the rules and do not govern a filing. The complainant should total the consideration from the invoice and receipts and choose the tier on that figure, and should also plead a territorial ground from Section 34(2), since value alone does not place the complaint in a particular district.

Q: How is a consumer complaint filed online?

Through the electronic filing portal maintained for the commissions. The e-Daakhil portal, launched on 7 September 2020, was built for electronic filing under the Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions Rules, 2020: the complainant or an advocate registers with authentication by a one time password on a mobile phone or an activation link on an email address, completes the particulars of the parties and the complaint, uploads the complaint and the supporting documents, pays the prescribed fee online, and thereafter tracks the matter, with hearings by video conference forming part of the same design. The filing services have since been consolidated into the e-Jagriti platform, and because the portal’s name and interface change, a filer should confirm the portal in use, the formats it accepts and the fee payable on it before filing. Filing in person at the registry, by post and through an authorised agent remain available in parallel.

Q: What documents and fee does a consumer complaint need?

The documents are the proof of the transaction and of the grievance: the invoice or receipt establishing the consideration paid, the contract, booking form or policy recording what was promised, the warranty or guarantee card where one applies, the correspondence with the trader or service provider showing the defect or deficiency was raised and not made good, the payment records, and any repair, inspection or expert record. The complaint is filed with an affidavit and the documentary evidence in support, in the sets the registry requires. The fee is prescribed by Rule 7 of the Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions Rules, 2020, on the consideration paid: nil up to Rs 5 lakh, Rs 200 above Rs 5 lakh and up to Rs 10 lakh, Rs 400 up to Rs 20 lakh, Rs 1,000 up to Rs 50 lakh, Rs 2,000 up to Rs 1 crore, Rs 2,500 up to Rs 2 crore, and Rs 3,000, Rs 4,000, Rs 5,000, Rs 6,000 and Rs 7,500 across the successive bands above Rs 2 crore.

Q: How long should a consumer case take?

The statute prescribes an endeavour, not a deadline. Section 38(7) requires that endeavour be made to decide a complaint within three months from the date of receipt of notice by the opposite party where no analysis or testing of goods is required, and within five months where it is, and where those periods are exceeded the commission records its reasons in writing at disposal. The steps before the hearing carry their own periods: admissibility ordinarily decided within twenty one days of filing under Section 36, the version within thirty days of notice and fifteen more at most, and a laboratory report within forty five days of the reference. A complete file, prompt replies and attendance on every date place a complaint in the class that finishes near the statutory scale, but pendency and vacancies in the commissions mean many cases run longer, and a filer should plan on that basis.

Q: How is a consumer order enforced against a seller?

By execution, as if the order were a decree of a civil court. Section 71 provides that every order of a District Commission, a State Commission or the 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 before it, and the provisions of Order XXI of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 apply with the necessary adaptations. The successful complainant files an execution application before the commission that passed the order, identifying the amount unpaid and the mode of execution sought, such as attachment and sale of the seller’s property. Behind execution stands Section 72: failure to comply with an order is an offence punishable with imprisonment for not less than one month and up to three years, or a fine of not less than Rs 25,000 and up to Rs 1 lakh, or both, triable by the commission itself with the powers of a Judicial Magistrate of the first class.

Q: What are the commonest reasons a consumer complaint fails?

Four threshold defects account for most failures, and all four are within the filer’s control. The first is status: the purchase was for resale or for a commercial purpose, and the complaint does not plead the facts, such as use by the buyer himself for earning his livelihood by self employment, that take it outside the exclusion in Section 2(7). The second is time: the complaint is filed outside the two years of Section 69 with no sufficient cause shown for condonation. The third is forum: the tier was computed on the compensation claimed rather than the consideration paid, or the bands printed in the Act as enacted were used instead of the Jurisdiction Rules 2021, and the complaint lands before a commission without jurisdiction. The fourth is character: the grievance is a breach of contract or a dispute requiring elaborate oral evidence and accounts, dressed as a defect or deficiency, in a procedure that decides on documents and affidavits.

Q: Where may a consumer complaint be filed: where the seller is based, or where the buyer lives?

Either, and the choice belongs to the complainant. Section 34(2) of the Act of 2019 permits a complaint to be instituted in a District Commission within whose local limits the opposite party resides, carries on business, has a branch office or personally works for gain; where the cause of action, wholly or in part, arises; or where the complainant resides or personally works for gain. The complainant side ground is an addition of the Act of 2019, made in recognition of distance selling and electronic commerce, and it means a buyer who purchased from a seller in another State files in the buyer’s own district and the seller answers there. The complaint should plead the ground relied on and the facts supporting it, and where several opposite parties are joined in different places, the presence of one of them within the district will usually anchor the complaint there.

Q: What must a consumer complaint contain?

No form is prescribed and no stamp paper is required, but the substance is fixed by what the commission must decide. The complaint should give the name, description and address of the complainant and of each opposite party so far as they can be ascertained; the facts constituting the cause of action, pleaded with dates, and when it arose; the ground under Section 2(6) of the Act into which the complaint falls, whether defect, deficiency, unfair trade practice, excessive price, hazardous goods or services, or product liability; the value of the goods or services paid as consideration, stated as a figure, because the tier of the commission depends on it; the territorial ground relied on; and the relief claimed, framed within the powers Section 39 gives the commission. It is accompanied by the documentary evidence in support and an affidavit verifying its contents, and filed in the sets the registry requires.

Q: What happens between the filing of a consumer complaint and its hearing?

The complaint first faces admission. Under Section 36, the commission ordinarily decides admissibility within twenty one days of filing, after hearing the complainant if rejection is contemplated, and if it does not decide within that period the complaint is deemed admitted. On admission, a copy of the complaint is referred to the opposite party within twenty one days, with a direction to file its version within thirty days, extendable by fifteen days at most. Where a defect in goods is alleged and cannot be determined without testing, a sealed sample goes to an appropriate laboratory, which reports within forty five days. The parties then place their evidence on affidavit with the documents relied on, any application for mediation under Section 37 is considered at the first hearing after admission, and the complaint is heard and decided, ordinarily on the papers, with in person or video examination only where sufficient cause is shown.

Q: How much time does the opposite party get to answer a consumer complaint?

Thirty days from receipt of the notice accompanied by a copy of the complaint, with an extension of up to fifteen days that the commission may grant: forty five days in all, and no more. Section 38 prescribes the period for the version in complaints about goods and services alike. The Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in New India Assurance Company Limited v Hilli Multipurpose Cold Storage Private Limited, (2020) 5 SCC 757, held on the identically worded provision of the Act of 1986 that a consumer forum has no power to extend the time beyond the statutory fifteen days, and that the period runs from the opposite party’s receipt of the notice with the complaint copy. A version filed after the forty five days is liable not to be taken on record, and the commission then proceeds on the material before it.

Q: When are goods sent to a laboratory in a consumer case?

When the complaint alleges a defect in goods that cannot be determined without proper analysis or test. Section 38(2) then prescribes the route: the commission obtains a sample of the goods from the complainant, seals and authenticates it in the prescribed manner, and refers it to an appropriate laboratory, meaning a laboratory recognised by the Central or a State Government or established or funded under law, under Section 2(2). Before the reference the complainant deposits the fee specified for the analysis, which the commission remits to the laboratory. The laboratory must report within forty five days of receiving the reference, or within an extended period the commission grants. The report is copied to the opposite party with the commission’s remarks, both sides may object in writing to the findings or the method, and the commission hears them on the report before passing its order. A complainant should preserve the goods unopened and unrepaired, since the sample is the evidence.

Q: Does a complainant have to accept mediation in a consumer case?

No. Mediation under the Act of 2019 is consensual at every step. Under Section 37, where at the first hearing after admission, or later, it appears to the commission that elements of a settlement acceptable to the parties exist, the commission may direct the parties to give their consent in writing, within five days, to have the dispute settled by mediation under Chapter V; only where both parties consent in writing does the commission refer the matter, and it must do so within five days of receiving the consent. Specified categories, including matters involving serious allegations of fraud or forgery and criminal or non compoundable matters, are excluded from reference by the Mediation Rules, 2020. If a settlement is reached, it is signed, reported, and recorded in an order within seven days under Section 81, against which no appeal lies; if none is reached, the commission hears the complaint on all issues, and nothing said in the mediation counts against either side.

Q: What relief can a consumer commission grant?

Section 39 lists the reliefs, and a complaint’s prayer should be framed from the list. Where the defect, deficiency, unfair trade practice or product liability claim is proved, the commission may direct the opposite party to remove the defect, to replace the goods with new goods of similar description free from defect, to return the price or charges paid with such interest as it decides, to pay compensation for loss or injury caused by the opposite party’s negligence, with power to grant punitive damages in fit circumstances, to compensate in a product liability action, to discontinue the unfair or restrictive trade practice and not repeat it, to withdraw hazardous goods from sale and cease hazardous manufacture or services, to issue a corrective advertisement at its own cost and cease misleading advertisements, and to pay adequate costs. Where a large number of consumers who cannot be identified conveniently have suffered loss, it may direct payment of not less than twenty five per cent of the value of the defective goods sold or services provided, credited to the Consumer Welfare Fund.

Q: Can a consumer complaint be sent by post instead of being filed in person?

Yes. A complaint under the Act of 2019 may be filed in person at the registry of the commission, by post, through an authorised agent, or electronically through the filing portal, and the complainant need not attend the registry to set the case in motion. A postal filing should be addressed to the commission with jurisdiction, should enclose the complaint, the affidavit and the documents in the sets the registry requires, and should enclose the fee by crossed demand draft or postal order, or evidence of electronic payment where that mode is available, since a filing short of its fee is incomplete. The sender should retain the postal receipt and obtain the registry’s acknowledgement and case number in due course, because limitation is satisfied by the filing and the filer needs the record that proves its date. Registry practice on sets and enclosures varies, and the portal or the registry itself is the authority to check before dispatch.

Q: What is the time limit for appealing a consumer commission order?

The ladder has three rungs with three periods. An appeal against an order of a District Commission lies to the State Commission within forty five days of the order, under Section 41. An appeal against an order of the State Commission lies to the National Commission within thirty days, under Section 51. An appeal against an order of the National Commission in its original jurisdiction lies to the Supreme Court within thirty days, under Section 67. Each appellate commission, and the Supreme Court under its provision, may entertain a late appeal where sufficient cause for the delay is shown. An appellant who has been ordered to pay an amount must deposit fifty per cent of that amount in the prescribed manner before the appeal is entertained, a condition that does not fall on a complainant defending an order in their favour. No appeal lies against an order recording a mediation settlement under Section 81.

Q: What happens if a consumer complaint is filed before the wrong commission?

It is not decided, and the time spent is largely lost. A commission that finds the consideration paid falls outside its pecuniary band, or that no territorial ground under Section 34(2) is made out, does not reach the merits: the complaint is returned for presentation to the commission that has jurisdiction, or dismissed for want of jurisdiction with liberty to approach the proper forum, and the filer presents it afresh, with a fresh admission stage before the correct commission. Limitation under Section 69 keeps running throughout, so a complaint filed near the end of its two years in the wrong forum may arrive at the right one out of time and dependent on condonation. The error is avoidable at the cost of minutes: total the consideration from the receipts, apply the operative bands of the Jurisdiction Rules 2021, District up to Rs 50 lakh, State above Rs 50 lakh to Rs 2 crore, National above Rs 2 crore, and plead the territorial ground expressly.

Q: Can a consumer also go to a civil court for the same grievance?

The remedies coexist, but they are not cumulative. Section 100 of the Act of 2019 provides that its provisions shall be in addition to, and not in derogation of, the provisions of any other law for the time being in force, so the consumer route does not extinguish a civil claim, a sectoral ombudsman complaint or any other remedy the facts support. The choice matters because the procedures differ: the commissions decide summarily, on affidavits and documents, and the Supreme Court has held that complexity alone does not oust them, while also recognising that disputes requiring elaborate accounts or a trial of fraud belong in a civil suit. A complainant who elects the consumer forum and obtains relief cannot recover the same relief again in a civil court, and parallel proceedings on the same claim invite objection; the election should be made deliberately, at the outset, on the nature of the proof the grievance needs.

Q: What happens if the opposite party does not reply or appear?

The case proceeds without them. Section 38 provides that where the opposite party, on receipt of the complaint copy, denies or disputes the allegations, the commission settles the dispute on the evidence brought to its notice, and where the opposite party omits or fails to take any action to represent its case within the time given, the commission proceeds to settle the dispute ex parte on the basis of the complainant’s evidence. Ex parte does not mean automatic success: the complainant must still prove the defect or deficiency, the consideration paid and the loss claimed, out of the documents and affidavits on record, and the commission decides on that material. A complainant facing an absent opposite party should therefore file the fullest documentary case at the outset rather than a skeleton one, since the hearing will be decided on the file as it stands. A complainant who fails to appear faces the mirror image consequence: the complaint is decided on merits on the material available.