The Consumer Affairs Ministry on Thursday said it will refer pending consumer cases to National Lok Adalat, which is scheduled to be held on Nov. 12, for disposal through settlement.
In an official statement, the ministry said that the National Lok Adalat will be held on 12th November 2022 across the country to dispose of pending cases through settlement. A large number of consumer cases are expected to be disposed of.
"Groundwork for this exercise has already been initiated and all the consumer commissions have been intimated to identify cases that have an element of settlement and prepare a list of pending cases that can be referred to Lok Adalat," the statement said.
Regular monitoring of the making of the list is been done by the department fo consumer affairs.
To have maximum outreach and benefit consumers, the department is reaching out to consumers, companies, and organizations through SMS and emails.
It has the phone numbers and emails of 3 lakh parties whose cases are pending before the commissions. The Department has done a Video Conferencing with the Consumer Commissions which has more than 200 pending cases.
A separate link is being created and circulated amongst all stakeholders wherein one can enter their pending case number and commission where the case is pending and easily refer the matter to Lok Adalat. The link shall be circulated through email and SMS.
"Through data analytics, sector-wise distribution of pendency has been identified such as banking with a total number of 71379 pending cases, insurance with 168827, e-commerce with 1247, electricity with 33919, railways with 2316, etc, and efforts are being made towards the settlement of such consumer cases on priority," it said.
The Department is constantly monitoring the disposal of cases in Consumer Commissions and is in the process of collaborating with the National Legal Service Authority for referring the inclusion of pending consumer cases to be disposed of through the upcoming National Lok Adalat.
Communication in this regard has already been made to NALSA, it said.
There are about 6,07,996 consumer cases pending in the country. In NCDRC there are about 22,250 numbers of cases pending.
Uttar Pradesh has 28,318 cases pending, Maharashtra 18,093, Delhi 15,450 cases, Madhya Pradesh 10,319 and Karnataka 9,615 pending cases.
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