A Delhi court has held the government responsible for the birth of an unwanted child in a poor household because the mother became pregnant despite undergoing sterilisation under a government-sponsored scheme at a hospital. Asking the government to bear the expenses of rearing the boy, additional district judge Kamini Lau awarded the 40-year-old mother, Nirmala, a compensation of Rs 1 lakh on Tuesday.
While awarding the compensation, ADJ Lau said “The serious problem of population explosion warrants and demands that adequate measures be taken by the government while adopting and implementing the family planning scheme successfully.”

NEW DELHI: The National Consumer Commission has held the DDA guilty of causing mental agony to a woman who was not handed over possession of a flat for nine years and asked it to pay Rs 50,000 as compensation. The Commission, comprising Justice R C Jain and member Anupam Dasgupta, also asked the housing agency to pay interest to allottee Prabhati at the rate of 15% on Rs 8.59 lakh for the period between 1998 to 2005.
“In the facts and circumstances of the case, we hold that the delays in issuing the letter of possession of the flat and in delivering its possession are instances of gross misfeasance in the DDA,” the Commission said, adding that it was an “inexplicable and deliberate” delay by the authority. The panel passed the order on DDA’s plea challenging the Delhi Consumer Commission’s direction to it, asking the agency to pay the allottee Rs 50,000 compensation and Rs 2,500 cost.

This is not the first time such a judgment has been passed on the DDA, which has been held guilty in many previous such cases of causing agony to people who have been successful in winning flats, and then being forced to wait for long periods before getting possession. And yet a systematic cleanup of the DDA does not seem like a possibility, given the vested interests involved.

The South Mumbai District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum has directed the chief postmaster-general of Mumbai and the postmaster in charge of Tardeo post office to pay Rs 8,000 for non-delivery of mail. The consumer court had initially sent a notice to a Mahim airconditioner dealer after Shobha Alimchandani complained of deficiency in service but the envelope came back, with “address not known returned to sender” stamped on it. Alimchandani then located the address and filed a complaint against post office officials for shoddy service.
“We direct postal officials to jointly pay the complainant Rs 5,000 as compensation for expenses and Rs 3,000 as compensation for harassment,” the forum said. Consumer activist Rajan Alimchandani said the complaint was filed on realising that the complainant was being fooled by the postman who had not delivered the mail deliberately.

In this case, the case also included the top official of the postal department for Mumbai, thus ensuring that responsibility for shoddy performance is laid at the responsible level.

Residents of Pimpri-Chinchwad can now register a complaint against civic problems by simply sending an SMS. The Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) launched the SMS complaint service on a trial basis on March 20. Since then, around 70 grievenaces have been received, of which only seven are pending.
The civic authorities will classify the compliants as either simple or complex. “Simple complaints would be those which can be solved in a few days, like potholes, choked drainages, and so on. The complex ones are those that require a longer time for redressal,” Sharma stated. The SMSes can be sent to the mobile phone number 9922501450. Citizens should include their name and address in their text message. Grievances can also be e-mailed to complaints@pcmcindia.gov.in.

It is good to see that the municipal authorities are taking action that is helpful to citizens, and one hopes that other municipal corporations also adopt such practices, and that the Pimpri-Chinchwad continues down this path.

CHENNAI: The Madras high court has directed the Chennai Corporation to pay compensation of Rs 1 lakh to the parents of a child, who drowned in a storm water drain negligently left open by sanitation workers. Pointing out that the 18-month-old Venugopal died over 10 years ago, Justice Chandru decried the Chennai Corporation for having failed to submit its reply to the court in a timely manner.
He directed the civic body to pay the compensation amount to the child’s parents within four weeks, and warned that any failure in this regard would be viewed seriously by the court. “Insofar as the death of Venugopal, the Chennai Corporation is squarely responsible. Because of their negligence in not keeping the storm water drainage in closed condition, such an incident had happened. The minor Venugopal cannot be expected to know the danger of the stormwater drainage kept in an open condition,” he said.

In this case, the drain was kept open while cleaning was happening. This is negligence, since as the court pointed out, it is not expected that children will have the same sense of danger. Keeping a drain open like this was hence very dangerous.

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Wondering if DDA derives “some kind of sadistic pleasure” in harassing citizens, Delhi High Court has slammed the civic agency in a case of double allotment of a flat in 1991 due to which the rightful owner was deprived of its possession and had to wage a 17 year legal battle in court.
“Ignoring dictum of law the officials of DDA keep perpetuating their illegal acts giving an impression as if they derive some kind of sadistic pleasure to harass the citizens,” HC observed while castigating the civic body for having the nerve to demand double the price of a flat which wasn’t handed over to Gandhi in 1991 because of DDA’s double allotment mistake.

This case really highlights as to how uncaring an agency can be. DDA double-allotted a flat in 1991, and when the lady in question tried to get the mistake corrected, the DDA did a fresh allotment to her after 10 years and charged her new prices, at double the original cost. In such cases, the Court should also assign individual responsibility and fine officials responsible (including fining officials of the rank of Chairman and Vice-Chairman if they had made such recommendations).

Unless a bank or a financial institution is equipped with a court order to repossess a vehicle which it has given on loan, it has no authority to go to the residence of the borrower to take away the vehicle by force. This was observed by the state consumer commission in a recent order.
Taking strong exception to the method adopted by a finance firm to recover dues in the form of a few unpaid instalments from a consumer who took the money to purchase a vehicle, the commission headed by Justice J D Kapoor directed Citicorp Finance (I) Limited to pay Rs 50,000 to one Jan Mohammad, a resident of Mehrauli, for the mental agony, harassment and public humiliation he faced. It was observed by the commission that no financier or bank had the authority to forcibly take possession of the vehicle as the loan agreement or hire purchase agreement were civil contracts and therefore had to be enforced through civil remedy. In other words, through intervention of the court.

It may be argued that the judicial system in India is slow and cases take a long time to settle; however that cannot be an argument for using force or illegal means. A company needs to act in the constraint of the law, so they need to use greater discretion when deciding loans, or they need to go in for more out-of-court settlements in such cases.