Published Paper Details:

The idea of consumer protection witnessed new dimensions with the passage of a recent Consumer Protection Act, 2019. India being member of United Nations is committed to act upon the revised United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection (UNGCP) 2015 which provides that member states need to come up with Consumer Protection policies essentially giving the consumers a cost effective, reasonable and expeditious platform to redress their grievances. The objective of this article is to analyze that how creating proper legal and administrative measures can make way for speedy consumer justice and lead to consumer centric approach in the governance. The earlier Consumer Protection Act, 1986 though provided three tier institutions in the form of Consumer Forums at district level, Commissions at the State and National levels. The working of these forums ushered many changes by promoting the interest of consumers as the disposal rates of complaints were fairly good. However, Critical scrutiny shows that the final disposal in many cases is getting delayed for variety of reasons such as traditional legal work process and attitude, lack of infrastructure and awareness etc. Therefore this article will try to assess the provisions in the new Act of 2019 as well as other existing statutory legal provisions such as exploring other mechanisms like Alternative disputes resolution, Lok Adalat etc. for achieving the objectives of speedy and effective Consumer Disputes Resolution.