VADODARA: The government is attempting to generate awareness about consumer rights throughout the’jaago grahak jaago’ effort.
However, for the aggrieved customers who knock the doors of this courtroom, the wait for justice can be very long.
A right to information (RTI) program filed by a consumer rights activist has shown that from 38 customer courts allotted from the state authorities, just 26 are practical and they also are severely understaffed.
“I had been getting a great deal of complaints regarding the delay in hearing cases in the user courts during the past few years.
The complaints have grown because the past couple of months after which I registered a RTI program in May this season to receive details regarding the appointments and Regulations from the courts.
I was shocked after I made the answer recently,” stated P V Moorjhani, customer rights activist from town.
He explained that each of the customer courts ought to possess a single district judge and 2 nearest associates.
“There ought to be 26 judges at the courts however only 13 have judges because of today.
In addition, in the 26 operational courts there must be 52 nearest associates.
But now there are just 27 non-judicial associates in those courts,” Moorjhani, that conducts Jagrut Nagrik, told TOI.
“According to the Consumer Protection Act, merely a court with one judge and a judicial member could hear cases and provide judgements.
But in a few courts, just non-judicial members are providing judgements.
Such judgements do not have some legal sanctity and they’re null and void,” Moorjhani asserted.
“Why is not the government completing the articles in the user courts? What’s the purpose in conducting a customer education campaign once the customers are not getting justice time” Contested Moorjhani.
He added that in case the government does not act within a week, then he’ll record a PIL.
“I shall beg to attract the customer courts beneath the top court and the authorities should fill all of the empty articles immediately,” Moorjhani stated.
Based on Moorjhani, Vadodara has roughly 5,000 cases pending at the customer courtroom while Ahmedabad, Surat and Rajkot annually have approximately 4,000 impending cases.