It was a one-day conference of those who administer consumer justice in the country. It’s now an annual event in New Delhi and is attended by those who head consumer courts at the state level and the secretaries who handle consumer affairs in the states.

The agenda is usually quite predictable with the Centre politely asking the states why they have not provided the required facilities for the proper functioning of the courts. But this time, the officials of the Union ministry of consumer affairs were brutally frank about the state of affairs and presented some startling facts about the functioning of these courts.

For example, despite the law stipulating a time limit of 90 days for adjudication of complaints, very few consumer courts were following it. In the Haryana State Commission, only four per cent of the cases were decided within the stipulated time. Its neighbour, Punjab decided nine per cent of the cases within the time norms prescribed under the law. Surprisingly, the new state of Uttaranchal has done considerably better ? 40 per cent of the cases filed before it were decided within the time norms. While Delhi stuck to the time limit in only 19 per cent of the cases, West Bengal in 20 per cent.

Among the district forums, Andhra Pradesh seems to have earned notoriety for the slow pace at which cases were decided ? only six per cent of the complaints were decided within the time limit, while in West Bengal and Assam it was 45 per cent and 32 per cent respectively.

If the slow pace of dispute resolution in these courts is bad news, there is more to come. In several state commissions and district forums, there are complaints pending for more than five years! And as many as 20 states are yet to fill up vacancies ? totalling 274 ? that have arisen in the district fora.

The Union ministry of consumer affairs now feels that along with improving the consumer justice system, efforts have to be made to wean consumers away from them. It is therefore in the process of getting retailers and manufacturers to do what they should have done long ago ? set up effective systems of consumer complaint resolution, so that consumers seek justice through the consumer courts only when these systems fail them.

But the reality is that unless manufacturers and service providers fear the consumer courts, they will not set up an alternate dispute redressal mechanism. And that fear will come about only when consumer courts start utilising the provisions under Section 14 to award not just steep damages, but punitive damages too.