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Fiercely independent and pro-consumer information on personal finance.
30-day online access to the magazine articles published during the subscription period.
Access is given for all articles published during the week (starting Monday) your subscription starts. For example, if you subscribe on Wednesday, you will have access to articles uploaded from Monday of that week.
This means access to other articles (outside the subscription period) are not included.
Articles outside the subscription period can be bought separately for a small price per article.
Fiercely independent and pro-consumer information on personal finance.
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The new proposal does not provide for (1) "not diverting the personal money of consumers lying unclaimed or un-refunded in any of the accounts to any other accounts e.g. The Finance Act 2015, Consolidated Fund of India, or the National Anti-profiteering Authority under the GST Act", (2) "not diverting the personal money of consumers recovered by any of the government agencies in the State or the Centre, including the Regulators, on account of charging more than the MRP - excluding taxes" - as has been doing in the present case of diverting the money recovered in the case of pharmaceutical industry by NPPA to the Consolidated Fund of India.
It must be noted by the consumer activists and appreciated also by the Union Food and Public Distribution Minister Ram Vilas Paswan that we are not living in the times of Rajas or British Raj or Islamic Raj, but in Democracy of the people, for the people and by the people, where any money, property or asset of any kind is left behind by the consumers of goods and services bought against payment, after demise or forgotten, or piled up in government custody because of mismanagement and bad governance cannot belong to or cannot be diverted or taken away from by the force of any legislative measures to feed the political needs of the Authority, e.g. Consolidated Fund of India, The Finance, NAA, etc., except or putting the same honesty back into the custody of Consumer Welfare Fund under the Consumer Protection Act (amended or replaced), which shall be managed by the Consumer Protection Councils under the CPA.
The consumers in India must come up and speak loudly against the anti consumer moves of the government by enacting the new consumer protection legislations, and unite.
Mr. Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP, needs to be reminded that the government hospitals do not provide any services free of cost but against the taxes and cess collected from consumers for the services. Government is not doing any obligation by giving free government hospital services.
The present amendment to CPA and its replacement is more a case of revenge against the political opposition to then regime instead of being a rational leader of the citizens.
To give one example: as per the CPA it is the right of the consumer to know the correct details of the goods and services he is availing. The railways inflates the distance on the Konkan route (and possibly on the mountain routes too!) by 40 percent on the Roha-Thokur sector and charges the consumers fare for this inflated distance. This is in blatant violation of the CPA. I had approached the Railway Board with the suggestion that they could introduce a Konkan surcharge, if needed, but should abstain from cheating consumers. They did not agree and the even the consumer courts played foul. The cheating continues.
In government it is said that the right hand does not know what the left is doing. A similar situation prevails in the matter of sale of used cars. Many dealers are offering exchange of new vehicles for old. But they just take the old vehicle and adjust the cost against the cost of the new vehicle. However the papers of the old vehicle will be processed only when they have sold the old vehicle to another customer. It could take months and maybe years. The apex court had sometime back ruled that the owner, as per the registration document, is liable for any thing happening with the vehicle. I do not know if the new Motor Vehicles Act takes care of this problem. Does the CCPA cater for it?
Those interested in further reading may go through my blogs The crime of non-governance and quasi judicial organisations (letter to CM, Kerala of 12/1/10)
http://raviforjustice.blogspot.com/2011/04/crime-of-non-governance-and-quasi.html and Obnoxious functioning of consumer fora/commissions- letter to minister (of 8/1/11)
at http://raviforjustice.blogspot.com/2011/04/obnoxious-functioning-of-consumer.html