Judgment

AHMADI, J.

( 1 ) THE Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (Act of 1986) received the assent of the President on 24/12/1986. This legislation was enacted for the protection of the interests of the consumers and for that purpose to provide for the establishment of Consumer Councils and other authorities for the settlement of consumers disputes and matters connected therewith. S. 1 (3) thereof provided that it shall come into force on such date as the Central Government will provide by notification. Since different dates could be appointed by different States and for different provisions the provisions of the Act did not come into force on a single date in the entire country. The provisions contained in Chapters I,ii and IV were brought into force by the Central Government w. e. f. 15/04/1987 and Chapter III from 1/07/1987. The Consumer Protection Rules, 1987, made under S. 30 (1) of the Act were also brought into force w. e. f. 15/04/1987. For the sake of brevity these two pieces of legislations shall hereafter be referred to as the Act and the Rules. respectively.

( 2 ) THE object of the legislation, as the Preamble of the Act proclaims, is for better protection of the interests of consumers. During the last few years preceding the enactment there was in this country a marked awareness among the consumers of goods that they were not getting their moneys worth and were being exploited by both traders and manufacturers of consumers goods. The need for consumer redressal fora was, therefore, increasingly felt. Understandably, therefore, legislation was introduced and enacted with considerable enthusiasm and fanfare as a path breaking benevolent legislation intended to protect the consumer from exploitation by unscrupulous manufacturers and traders of consumer goods. A three-tier fora comprising the District Forum, the State Commission and the National Commission came to be envisaged under the Act for redressal of grievances of consumers. The petitioner, common cause, a registered society, espousing the cause of members of the public, filed this petition two years after the Act came into force complaining that the implementation of the provisions of the Act was sluggish, in that, the machinery for redressing the grievances of the poor consumers at the base-level i. e. the District Forums, had not been set up in all the districts in the country except a few. This writ petition was, therefore, moved under Art. 32 of the Constitution for a direction to the appropriate Government for urgent implementation of the provision of the Act in this behalf. Similar grievances are made in the second petition also.

( 3 ) NOTICES were issued to the Union, the State Governments and the Union Territories requiring them to file counters indicating the action taken for setting up a District Forum in each district under the Act. After the counters were filed by most of the States, except a few, this Court passed an order of 17/01/1990 directing that every district shall have a District Forum with the District Judge of the district as its President. This was a stop-gap arrangement. A further direction was given that the concerned Governments will appoint two more members to constitute the District Forum in every district. The President of the National Commission was requested to obtain first-hand information from every State/u. T. about full compliance of the requirements of the statute. The High Courts were also requested to accord appropriate sanction/ consent for the functioning of District Judges as Presidents of the District Fora. Pursuant to the above order the President of the National Commission visited the States of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and filed his interim report dated 19/04/1990 pointing out that in all these States the District Forum existed in only a few districts and the majority of the districts remained unserviced. A second detailed report covering the States of Gujarat, Goa,