Consumer Protection Bill Balancing Consumer Rights With Ease Of Doing Business

In an effort to bring India's Consumer Rights framework up to speed, the Consumer Protection Bill, 2018 is contemplated and in public domain. In this article, we examine the overall bill and what it means for businesses that are engaged in the manufacture and sale of consumer goods and provide consumer services.

   Consumer Protection Watchdog Under the scheme of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, businesses were accustomed to defending claims from consumers alone. The definition of a consumer which excluded transactions availed for commercial purposes, raised jurisdictional issues which itself led to frequent dismissals of complaints.

What the earlier Act did not have was an agency to proactively screen the market for prospective consumer rights violations and respond before a consumer suffered an injury due to defective goods or deficiencies in services.