India is gearing up to establish its first ever authority with the power to initiate mass-scale product recall.
By Avishek Dastidar
Designed on the lines of the Federal Trade Commission of the US, the authority will intervene with class action against manufacturers or providers of services whose faulty products have impacted a large number of buyers.
Operating in multiple levels of intervention, right from product inspection to complaints by consumers, the Minister of Consumer Affairs is going to create the authority with the necessary teeth that safeguards individual consumers from having to engage in lawsuits against manufacturing giants.
“If there is complaint about a newly launched car, chances are a large number of cars will have the same problem.
In that case, it does not make sense to treat that as an individual customer’s grievance. The authority will then intervene with class action,” Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan told The Indian Express.
Misleading ads in posters, wall-writings, billboards and the like with dubious claims of products promising to make the consumer taller, thinner, fairer etc will be nipped by suo motu intervention by the authority.
To gain feedback about products in the market, the ministry is in the process of creating a web portal so that consumers can log in and complain. Apart from complaints from consumers, the nature of triggers prompting action from the authority will also be product inspection and market survey on customer feedback.
The idea of the authority, operating at national, state and district levels, is to embed the powers and scope of the Prevention of Unfair Trade Practices Act in the authority and equip it with tools for necessary executive action in the overall consumer-protection ecosystem of the country, said a senior ministry official.
“Assuming the lift in an apartment building does not function as promised, the residents welfare association will not need to fight with the manufacturer in an individual case, but can alert the authority for class action,” the official said.