NEW DELHI: Delhi Metro has fined at least 3,000 commuters for spitting, squatting and defacing its property inside the stations and has earned over Rs 6 lakh from penalties. “The rules to impose fines came into effect in November last year. Since then we have imposed fines on around 3,000 violators. The earning is over Rs 6,00,000,” a Delhi Metro official said on Wednesday.
The offences ranged from spitting and squatting to defacing Metro property. The penalty varied between Rs 150 and 500. While spitting and squatting at Metro stations invites a penalty of Rs 200, damaging property leads to a fine of Rs 500. Authorities said with a growing commuter base, the violations had increased forcing the authorities to bring in the rules. But now the number of violations has come down marginally.

This is something that most utilities will need to follow if they need to ensure that they are able to maintain a level of cleanliness.

Undoubtedly, SEBI has done a lot to protect the interest of investors. There are, however, some areas where action needs to be initiated to ensure that investors, particularly small gullible ones, are protected from unscrupulous promoters, conniving auditors and mercenary manipulators.
The limited punitive actions taken by the department of corporate affairs and SEBI against the companies and their directors do not answer the basic question of compensating the investors who for no rhyme or reason are the losers. The argument that investment in equities is a matter of risk and reward cannot be extended to the frauds committed by these companies. Small investors, at least up to Rs 25,000, need to be compensated.

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.

Here to attend a family function at Chandigarh and Amritsar, Dhillon and her husband, Manjinder got two tickets booked from London to Delhi for October 12, 2006 and further tickets were booked in connecting flight from Delhi to Chandigarh. As per the schedule, they reached Heathrow Airport but allegedly ground staff told them that the flight was delayed.
They stayed overnight and reached Delhi on October 14, 2006. The ordeal continued when they arrived at Delhi airport as, allegedly, the ground staff here informed them that the connecting flight from Delhi to Chandigarh was after 12 hours. As the couple had to reach Chandigarh at the earliest, they refused to wait for such a long period. Allegedly Dhillons were sent to Chandigarh by a shared taxi by the ground staff.

This is not an uncommon occurrence to happen, after all the world over have to suffer due to flights getting delayed; and in many cases, this could be due to technical snags or similar issues that can cause legitimate delays, although passengers do get inconvenienced. However, in this case, the airline did not present any proof of technical problems or something similar, which could mean that the flight delay could have been for other reasons that were not of a technical nature. If true, such things need to be penalized.

However, she did not receive documents or acknowledgement and her enquiry revealed that the insurance company had carelessly sent the documents to some other address. This, despite Gupta submitting the correct address. She added even the policy papers were prepared in the wrong name. Though she got policy papers, Gupta still gave a written request for correction of name and address for further correspondence. She also made a request that she was not able to deposit Rs 50,000 for rest of the two years because the insurance company was not giving the details enquired.
After going through the facts and fully analyzing the case, the forum, headed by Lakshman Sharma, held, “The insurance company did practically nothing to incorporate necessary corrections in respect of her name and postal address in the policy documents. Also, it did not bother to supply the original documents to her for a long time and unfortunately not supplied the same till date, which is clearly a gross lapse and grave deficiency in service on their part.”

It has been pointed out again and again that insurance companies can sometimes act like totally anti-consumer, unwilling to consider the best interests of consumers. It can get difficult for consumers to deal with companies that are cold and unfriendly, and consumers forums provide a lot of help in cases such as these.

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.

LUCKNOW: The State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Lucknow, has awarded a compensation of Rs 20 lakh to a student who waited for five and half years to obtain his marksheet for a back-paper examination which he undertook in 1999. The commission also held that an educational institution, while imparting education/or holding examination, does render a service as defined in the Consumer Protection Act. It was after repeated requests and written representations could not evoke action on the part of the opposite parties that he filed a writ petition in the high court.
The high court issued an order on May 24, 2004, directing the opposite parties to declare the result of the complainant. But, the order was taken lightly by the opposite parties and complainant, therefore, filed a contempt petition. However, the same was dismissed by the court because in the meantime the complainant’s back-paper result was declared (on April 11, 2004). The complainant then approached the commission. The commission, however, observed that inordinate delay in declaring the result has not only completely blocked but ruined the career of the complainant. It ruled that the case is of deficiency in service and rejected the contention of the opposite parties that the complainant is neither a consumer nor they (opposite parties) are rendering to him any service.

For many years now, there are many sections of society who claim to be serving interests of society, and not provide a consumer service. Medical services are one of them, and so are educational institutions, who take on the mantle of providing a higher service of education. However, in their conduct, they are nowhere near being of high morality, with their behavior being commercial. In such cases, it is eminently justifiable to hold them up for not acting in the interests of the student.

LUCKNOW: In a major judgement, the district consumer forum (DCF) here has directed the ICICI Bank to pay Rs 5 lakh as “exemplary compensation” to Dr AS Pradhan, a city-based doctor, for subjecting him to severe mental torture by forcing him to repay a loan which was never disbursed to him. Pradhan had applied for a Rs three lakh loan in the ICICI Bank in November 2003 for purchasing a second hand car.
He was asked to pay margin money of Rs 10,000 and complete the formalities with a promise that the loan would be sanctioned in a month. But as the sanctioning of loan got delayed, the person from whom Pradhan was supposed to purchase the car sold it off to another party.

And you can guess the rest. The bank did not disburse the money to the Doctor, but still had the gall to demand the money. In the end, the Doctor was forced to pay the money to the bank. It is only the consumer court that came to his help and gave him relief. At some point of time, the court systems in India are going to start ordering criminal charges where force has been used, and that will be an even bigger public relations disaster for the various banks.
They have to face a legal and judicial system that slows down recovery of their debt, but using force is not an answer. Additionally, doing it in a mistaken case is even worse.

The Supreme Court in a landmark judgment on Thursday reiterated its earlier stand that banks cannot deploy musclemen for recovery of loans from defaulters thus forcing them to end their lives.
The court while dismissing the ICICI Bank’s plea refused to delete the Delhi High Court’s remarks that held the bank and its musclemen responsible for abetting a youth to commit suicide by humiliating him and taking away his motorcycle financed by the largest private sector bank. The court also directed the concerned Deputy Commissioner of Police to submit the investigation report in the Delhi High Court.

This may seem like a tough call to banks, but this is the cost of doing business and banks cannot claim a special right to use force. The SC is actually now threatening banks with de-recognition if they do use force.

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an order of the national consumer commission awarding Rs 38.04 lakh compensation to the mother of a seven-year-old girl who died after she was sucked into an escalator at Delhi’s international airport in December 1999. The order marked a stinging rebuke to the Airports Authority of India which, despite strong evidence pointing to its callousness in not maintaining the escalator, had sought to dispute the compensation granted to Geeta Jethani.
While awarding the compensation, the commission had criticized the cussed attitude of AAI in questioning the compensation for a death which clearly resulted from its apathy, saying the case pointed to the extent “we have developed the tendency to deny the obvious, in litigation”. “Except admitting the trapping of a young child in the escalator, the AAI has tried to dispute its liability and deficiency in service. We do not know when we will change our jurisprudence which encourages such attitude of denials and protracts litigation and increases burden on adjudicating forums/courts,” Justice M B Shah, chairman of the commission, had said in his verdict.

The whole incident was extremely shocking when it happened. From my memory, investigation seemed to show that the escalator was not being maintained properly, and in addition, there was no immediate button to stop the escalator. It seems a default now that every escalator has a Red stop button that will immediately stop the escalator, but such was not the case at that point of time. It was only after that incident was there increased focus on making sure that the escalator can stop in an emergency.
The other major problem that becomes evident from this case is that nature of Government enterprises. There is an incredible amount of lethargy, work-saving, and passing the buck that happens. This very rarely gets pointed out since these are after all Government enterprises, but one hopes that more judgments like these will ensure that even Government run enterprises are responsible for ensuring safety at their premises and for ensuring that customer service is their motto. This is hopeful thinking, but one rarely knows whether such an attitude change could happen.