Mumbai’s consumer courts hand out peanuts after years of battle

Despite winning his consumer case against the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mahavir Chopda, 27, is distraught. The court ordered the institute to pay back his admission fees of Rs1 lakh, with interest, since he had opted out of the institute in 2006. But NMIMS paid only Rs2,000 by way of costs. The court held that an interest of 12% would suffice as compensation.

In Mumbai, the consumer is not king, at least the ones who move court. Even in favourable orders, the courts more often than not grant paltry compensation.

“It was the court’s responsibility to restore the status quo and penalise the institution which had wronged me. My situation is like that of a pickpocket who returns my wallet, but is not arrested by the police. NMIMS lost nothing despite the case,” said Chopda, who plans to appeal for an enhancement of the compensation.
Increasingly, consumer courts in the city, meant for the benefit of the people, are proving to be deficient, say experts. While the Consumer Protection Act is benevolent legislation, meant to protect the rights of consumers, the people are losing their confidence in the court.

“As far as Mumbai is concerned, consumer courts have been ridiculous. The orders often defy logic or a sense of justice, which a person can follow as precedent. The courts grant compensation as if they are doing the consumers a favour while totally neglecting the actual loss suffered by the consumer,” said consumer court lawyer Anand Patwardhan.

Take the case of Chandrakant Anandpura, 84. The old man and his wife had taken a Jet Airways flight to Udaipur in 2001. The plane did not have air-conditioning (AC) and was extremely suffocating. However, the consumer court, while advising the airlines to take care of AC in the future, dismissed the complaint on technical grounds in 2005.

“Despite proving that there was no AC in the airplane, the court let the airlines go scot-free. In comparison, in the US, they paid over $6 lakh to a consumer whose hand was burned by hot coffee. Here, we suffer and no one pays any attention,” said Anandpura. He cited a complaint he had filed against MTNL about 10 years ago. The case lasted four years. And the compensation granted was merely Rs750.

Anandpura, who writes columns on consumer-related issues in two Gujarati newspapers every week, said: “When people seek my advice, I tell them not to move consumer court and try compromise. What is the point? The case will go on for four or five years and then the order will not even be worth it.”

The compensation hardly covers even photocopying costs. Advocate Uday Wavikar said: “Legal costs fixed by the Bombay Bar Association is a minimum of Rs20,000 for a senior lawyer and Rs16,000 for a junior lawyer. Even these are not covered in the compensation.”