The main legal point established in the judgment is that a class action complaint under Section 12(1)(c) of the Consumer Protection Act requires specific averments to indicate 'sameness of interest' among the consumers, and the value of goods/services in respect of the complainants must exceed the de minimis Rs.1 crore to entitle the NCDRC to exercise jurisdiction.

JUDGMENT (Oral)

1. This petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India assails order dated 23rd November, 2017, passed by the learned National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (the learned NCDRC) in Consumer Complaint 1747/2016, along with IA/10846/2016 and IA/1063/2017 (Vinod Kumar Gupta & Anr. v. TDI Infrastructure Ltd.) filed therein.

2. It may be noted, here, that, of the two complainants before the learned NCDRC, Complainant 2 settled the matter with the petitioner and, therefore, the proceedings before the learned NCDRC survived only in respect of Complainant 1 Vinod Kumar.

3. The petitioner has impleaded the Union of India as Respondent 1 as certain omnibus directions are sought, expressing grievance regarding the manner in which applications under Section 12(1)(c) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 are being disposed of by the learned NCDRC. I do not propose in this petition to enter into the said larger issue. Accordingly, the UOI is deleted from the array of parties.

4. There is no appearance on behalf of the respondents after 5th April, 2022, when a Counsel had appeared consequent to issuance of court notice on 31st March, 2022. Thereafter, however, though the matter has been listed on 7th April, 2022, 13th April, 2022, 20th April, 2022 and 27th April, 2022, Respondent 2 has remained unrepresented. Today the matter was passed over once and was called out a second time. There is no appearance on behalf of either of the respondents today.

5. The issue in controversy is covered by my recent decision in Lucina Land Development Ltd. v. UOI, 2022 SCC OnLine Del 1274.

6. As such, I have heard Ms. Kanika Agnihotri, learned Counsel for the petitioner and perused the record, and proceed to dispose of the present petition.

7. These proceedings emanate from a complaint, filed by Respondent 2 and Mr. Sukumar Pattjoshi against the petitioner under Section 21(a)(i) read with Section 12(1)(c) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 ("the Act" hereinafter). The grievances as ventilated in the complaint were with respect to a township project of the petitioner, named "TDI City", at Kundli Sonipat, Haryana (hereinafter referred to as "the Project"). Admittedly, the project comprised housing units in various blocks, designated as Blocks A to L. The complainants were buyers of residential plots in the project. They complained, in the complaint, that the plots allotted to them were undeveloped and inhabitable and were lacking basic amenities.

8. The grievances in the complaint included (i) lack of clear title, complete licenses and statutory sanctions, with the petitioner, (ii) collection of amounts from the consumers in excess of the price reflected in the statement issued by the petitioner at the stage of allotment, which was represented, at that stage, to be the complete and final price, (iii) escalation of the price of individual plots several times on the ground that the External Developmental Charges (EDC) had been revised by the State of Haryana retrospectively, along with penalty, (iv) usage, by the petitioner, of a part completion certificate issued by the concerned authorities in Haryana, without specifying the part of the project in respect of which the certificate had been issued, (v) handing over of possession, by the petitioner, to a limited number of plot holders, confined to the front blocks of the various units, (vi) execution of an allegedly one sided plot buyer agreement by the petitioner, (vii) lack of development works since several years and (viii) lack of basic amenities such as water, electricity etc. at the site.

9. While ventilating these grievances, the complaint does not contain any assertion to the effect that all these grievances were felt by all the purchasers of the residential plots in all the blocks of the project. Nonetheless, an omnibus prayer was made in the complaint, for a direction to the petitioner to return the amounts collected from the complaints and all consumers of resi