NEW DELHI: The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) will now entertain consumers’ complaints where the value of the goods or services is more than Rs 2 crore as against the earlier limit of more than Rs 10 crore, according to a notification issued by the consumer affairs ministry.
Similarly, the district commissions will have jurisdiction to entertain complaints up to Rs 50 lakh worth value of goods or services as against the earlier limit of up to Rs 1 crore and the state commissions will entertain cases for more than Rs 50 lakh and up to Rs 2 crore. NCDRC and state commissions can take complaint of any value on appeal.
The ministry said the norms have been revised with the aim of faster disposal of consumer complaints. It said after the Consumer Protection Act of 2019 came into force, which provided for increasing the financial threshold of complaints for admission in different consumer commissions, it was observed this caused significant increase in the workload of district commissions and was leading to a rise in pendency and delay in disposal of cases. This happened because these provisions were leading to cases which could earlier be filed in the national commission to be filed in state commissions and cases which could earlier be filed in state commissions to be filed in district commissions. The ministry said the changes have been made after holding wide consultations with states and UTs, consumer organisations and law chairs.