Where can the consumer access justice? The commissions are falling woefully short

With significant vacancies and pendency in state and district consumer commissions, trust in consumer justice is taking a hit

Written by Siddharth Lamba and Shreehari Paliath

In February 2026, the South Goa District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission issued a bailable arrest warrant against Ola Electric Technologies founder and CEO Bhavish Agarwal for failing to appear before it regarding a consumer complaint about a faulty scooter. Eventually, the warrant was stayed by the Bombay High Court, which said that the commission had transgressed its jurisdiction. It is highly unusual for a consumer commission to invoke the Consumer Protection Act (CPA), 2019, to issue an arrest warrant. It was probably out of desperation because large companies or parties tend to ignore or consider consumer commissions an avoidable nuisance. The concerns for the system are not the larger issue of enforceability and contestability alone. They are also around the substantial institutional gaps that diminish the capacity of justice delivery.

The Consumer Justice Report (CJR) 2026, released by the India Justice Report on the capacity and performance of consumer commissions, shows that in state and district commissions, 30-50 per cent of president positions and 40 per cent of member positions, respectively, were vacant in 2025.

The 2019 statute, which retains a three-tiered system structure, was designed as an improvement of its predecessor, the CPA of 1986. It created the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), a body empowered to investigate unfair trade practices, recall unsafe products, and penalise misleading advertisements and their endorsers, and incorporates mediation formally.

Vacancies depict a fundamental structural incapacity in commissions across the country. Among many of its provisions, timeliness is key: Every case must be disposed of within three to five months. And, at each State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (SCDRC), it is mandatory to have a president — a high court judge, sitting or retired — and at least four members. Both positions are vital for a commission to hear disputes and dispose of them. Worryingly, 17 SCDRCs did not have a president in 2025. Between 2021 and 2025, states without an SCDRC president had increased from two to 10, and member vacancies had increased from 25 per cent to 41 per cent. Only Rajasthan and West Bengal had a full composition for all five years. As a consequence, over 35 per cent of cases have been pending for more than three years in 19 SCDRCs, including Karnataka and Jharkhand. The lack of benches has made these appellate commissions a bottleneck. Only Rajasthan and Sikkim complied with the SP Bagla committee (2000) norms on staffing.

In district commissions, the presence of a president is mandatory. Each commission is supposed to comprise a president and two members. However, here too, in 2025, there is a 32 per cent vacancy for presidents across the country. While there are 775 districts, only 685 district commissions have been created despite a mandate to have at least one in each district.

The result of such large gaps in executive and secretarial staff has meant a gradual atrophying of consumer redressal mechanisms at large. This stagnation and loss of faith in consumer commissions is also borne out by analysis of over 29 lakh cases filed between 2010 and 2024. Despite the mandate to clear cases within five months, nearly 3.7 lakh disposed cases in SCDRCs took an average of 681 days to be cleared.

The efficiency and success of the consumer protection process is predicated on the trust of the complainant in institutions to deliver reliably and consistently. The ease of access to a functioning commission is critical to it. If vacancies persist and commissions can’t be accessed, it simply disengages from the due process of consumer protection. Governments must ensure that commissions are created as required by law in all districts, and also fill vacancies of presidents and members in a timely manner.

Between 2021-22 and 2024-25, Rs 686.4 crore was allocated for 21 SDCRC. The allocations are too little compared to the large and growing consumer base and its grievances.

There are existing provisions within the Act that, if used well, would prove to improve consumer redressal. Mediation as an alternative to prolonged adjudication is one. Presently, this remains severely under-utilised. Data collected through RTIs shows that 14 state commissions, including West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Karnataka, did not refer a single case for mediation. Only 134 cases were referred by 23 state commissions between 2022 and March ߩ of these, too, a meagre 20 per cent were settled.

Another provision is the Consumer Welfare Fund, which is funded from non-refundable GST collections to support consumer protection activities across the country. Initiatives such as the popular Jago Grahak Jago campaign and the consumer helpline are funded through this corpus. In 2023, the Union government recognised low mediation in consumer disputes due to high fees of mediators and capped the fee, which is paid from the fund, at Rs 3,000 for district commissions and Rs 5,000 for SCDRCs. But capping did not boost the mediation in consumer disputes.

Building a robust consumer protection system is in the best interest of the people. Such crippling gaps in institutional capacity do not bode well for a country that is expected to become a “$5 trillion economy” with an ever-growing consumer footprint. Some of the most densely populated cities on the planet are situated in India. It is therefore inevitable that the consumer protection mechanism will routinely be under pressure to deliver due to its limited capacity. Monitoring of redressal processes and institutional gaps is vital to maintain trust in consumer justice delivery.

Lamba is a researcher and Paliath is a consultant at India Justice Report