Consumer is King » Judgment

Stock exchanges are public bodies, covered under the RTI rules and have to provide information

ashish — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:56:14 +0000

When the RTI Act came into existence, many bodies still felt that they were outside the scope of the RTI act and could their flow of information secret and their functioning secret. However, over a period of time, the mandate of RTI has been fully revealed, covering Government and quasi-Government bodies, ensuring that people get the required information which they need. But many of these bodies in the past have been hesitant to accept that they are covered under RTI, with the bodies such as the Judiciary being the most hesitant to accept RTI as being valid for their decision making.
In this case, the RTI Commission, also known as the Central Information Commission, ordered that Stock exchanges are also covered by the RTI law, and when challenged in the High Court, the Court also confirmed this order of the Information Commission. The court did not accept the plea of the stock exchanges in this regard (link to article):

The court dismissed the plea of National Stock Exchange and Jaipur Stock Exchange which submitted that they cannot be forced to reveal information to public under the transparency law as they are autonomous bodies incorporated under Company Act and not controlled by the government.

Madras High Court strikes down college fees deemed excessive, with education being Government aided

ashish — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 06:51:47 +0000

Government aided colleges are a special case of various educations institutions where the Government gives a substantial chunk of the expenses of the educational institution, so that the course fees charged by the education institution (school or college) are subsidized, and typically cannot be raised easily or at will (and are not supposed to reflect the market rate for the fees). In many cases, this aid by the Government could be in the order of as much as 95% or above of the total expenses of the school or college (and while the educational institution retains management control, the education department of the state will have a stake in how things are run).
In this case, Loyola College (a reputed college in Chennai) was charging students fees for a course that was in the range of Rs. 5000 per semester, while the Government had set a mandate that the fees to be charged for the course where the Government was providing aid was much less than the charged amount, the mandate being only approx Rs. 250 as the feed. When the fees charged by the college was challenged in court, the college really did not have any way that they could justify the fees that they were charging; and as a result, the court made an interim order restraining the college from charging this amount as fees (link to article):

The Madras high court has retrained Loyola College, a leading government-aided arts and science college in Chennai, from collecting excess fees from students in the coming academic year. Significantly, the college has not denied the allegations that it was collecting excess fees. In a related development, the director of collegiate education has informed the court that a special audit of accounts would be undertaken at Loyola College to verify allegations about collection of excess fees raised by the Tamil Nadu Catholic Minorities Welfare Association, Choolaimedu.
The association’s secretary, V Amalraj, had in a petition alleged that as against the government-fixed fee of Rs 265 for the arts group courses (BA) conducted with the government aid, the college was collecting Rs 5,146 per semester. The college was charging approximately Rs 10,000 per annum from students who joined courses in the science stream (BSc), as against the government-fixed fee of Rs 500, he said. The petitioner argued that since the college received the government aid, it has to charge the fees as prescribed by the state government.

Interior design forced to pay Rs 1 lakh penalty for not completing the work promised, forcing the hiring of another firm

ashish — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:28:40 +0000

When you are setting up a new shop or a new business with clients / consumers coming to visit the office or location, there is a need to ensure that the place is attractive and gives a good appearance. Getting the design to be attractive is very important, and it is equally important that the work to make the place attractive is done in time and as part of a integrated project. So, it is essential that whoever is charged with doing the interior design and re-structuring of an office or shop gets the work done in time, and to your satisfaction. So what happens when this work does not happen in time, or the firm doing this delays the work and finally gives up ? You will need to re-plan your schedule, and hire somebody else to get the work done, resulting in a lot of mental aggravation and agony; one client took this to the consumer forum and got compensation (link to article):

The Mumbai Suburban District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum this week ordered an architecture and interior designing firm to pay Rs 1 lakh to a shop owner for not executing work on time. Bhasin said after that she engaged S R Choudhary, a consulting architect, to assess the quality and quantum of work executed by the firm as well as the losses it caused her. In her complaint, she sought compensation for the losses and also demanded that the interior designers should pay her the money she had to give the other architect firm to complete the work.

Gurdeep Komalan and Associates argued that the delay was caused among other things, by “Bhasin’s unclear mind and her constant interference’’. They also blamed the weather, including the 26/7 flood for it, and denied that the architect, Sunil Komalan, would stay away and not supervise the work. However, the forum presided by J L Deshpande said there was no evidence that the plan was ever changed at the insistence of Bhasin, which pushed back the deadline.

This also means that whenever you have an interaction with an external firm, make sure that all status and changes are properly reserved and recorded.

Insurance company forced to provide insurance even when the disease was within a year of the policy (exclusion cause)

ashish — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:05:12 +0000

How many times have you seen that the insurance policy by an insurance company comes with certain conditions, mentioned in the small print. These are various sections that the insurance company will not cover, including when the person is indulging in adventure sports, goes in for risky activities, or in the case of life insurance policies, if the death is due to suicide or in mob action, or similar stuff. For medical policies, it is fairly common that many diseases are not covered in the first year of the policy, which is normally standard policy by the insurance company to cover themselves from people who know that they will need medical treatment soon, and thus want to go in for a policy to cover these costs. However, the insurance companies normally do not mention such exclusions prominently enough for people to understand and realize the impact of such exclusions. Now a state consumer forum has ruled that this clause was not valid since the consumer was not adequately informed of this exclusion (link to article):

The state consumer commission has directed an insurance company to pay medical expenses incurred by a patient within a year of taking a mediclaim policy even though the exclusion clause stated otherwise. The commission noted the insurance company was guilty of not bringing the exclusion clause to the notice of the policy holder while issuing the policy.
After his mediclaim was rejected by the company, the policyholder, Sushil Kumar, approached the Delhi district forum which directed it to pay Rs 1 lakh towards insured amount besides Rs 10,000 as compensation.