May 14,2024 The Supreme Court on Tuesday held that advocates are not liable for deficiency of services under the Consumer Protection Act 1986 and cannot be sued for poor service before consumer courts. A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal said the legal profession is sui generis (unique) and the nature of work is specialised and cannot be compared with other professions. “Advocates have to respect client’s autonomy, not entitled to make concessions without express instructions from client and transgress authority. Considerable amount of direct control is with client of advocate. This strengthens our opinion that contract is of personal service and excluded from definition of service under Consumer Protection Act,” the bench said. The judgement came on plea filed by bar bodies, such as Bar Council of India, Delhi High Court Bar Association and Bar of Indian Lawyers, and other individuals challenging a 2007 verdict of the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC), which has ruled that advocates and their services come under the purview of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. Source: Economic Times

June 13,2024 Indians might have to dial up their phone expenses. If a new proposal by telecom regulator Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) gets the green light, your smartphone and landline numbers will soon come with a price tag. Trai feels that phone number “represents an exceedingly valuable public resource which is not infinite” and charges may be imposed on mobile operators, who may subsequently recover them from users. This move will bring additional trouble for users as Telecom giants Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi) are pushing customers to switch to tier-based postpaid plans. These plans charge more for users with heavier data usage, helping operators increase their average revenue per user (ARPU), according to analysts and industry insiders. Trai said just like Spectrum, ownership of the numbering space resides with government, which only grants mobile operators usage rights over the designated number resource during the tenure of licences. The new Telecom Law, which was passed in December last year, also has an enabling provision to charge for numbers, technically known as ‘telecom identifiers’. Mulling over the possible methods of charging, Trai said the government can look at either imposing a one-time charge per number, or seek an annual recurring charge for each numbering resource allocated to the service provider, or allocate numbering series, with govt conducting centralised auctions for the vanity numbers. It is also considering whether to impose penalties on operators, who are holding on to number resources with low utilisation. For instance, a subscriber might have dual SIMs and not use one for a long period, but the operator avoids cancelling the number to retain its user base. “Simply adhering to strict criteria for assigning numbering resources might not ensure judicious and efficient use of freely allotted numbering resources by service providers. One way of ensuring judicious and efficient use of any finite public resource is by imposing charges, while allocating it. Efficient utilisation can be further ensured by introducing penal provision for those holding numbering resources with low utilisation,” said Trai. Trai, which has to submit recommendations to govt that will also cover the aspect of ever-shrinking numbering resources in the era of 5G, machine-to-machine communications and internet of things, is also taking a leaf out of the several auctions that mobile operators carry out for ‘vanity/fancy/premium numbers’. To make a stronger case for fixing a charge on mobile operators, Trai cited several countries where a fee is levied for telephone numbers, either on the mobile operator or on subscribers. These include countries such as Australia, Singapore, Belgium, Finland, the UK, Lithuania, Greece, Hongkong, Bulgaria, Kuwait, Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Nigeria, South Africa, and Denmark. The regulator’s deliberations to charge telecom companies for numbering resources allocated to them will not solve the problem of inefficient use of mobile connections, but will result in the cost being passed on to users, industry executives said. A better solution for the challenges would be for the regulator to define ‘inactive connection’ and a cut-off period within which these numbers should be reallocated, an industry executive said. Source: Economic Times

June 11,2024 After going to the drawing board on several occasions, the Union Law Ministry on Tuesday finalised a document on the national litigation policy which seeks to expedite resolution of pending cases. Soon after assuming charge as the law minister, Arjun Ram Meghwal on Tuesday signed the national litigation policy “document”. The policy document will be placed before the Union Cabinet in the coming days for its approval. The policy is part of the 100-day agenda of the Modi 3.0 government, sources said. Interacting with reporters soon after taking charge, Meghwal said a key priority of the ministry would be faster justice in matters pending in the Supreme Court, high courts, lower courts, tribunals and consumer courts. A senior functionary said the issues flagged by the minister relating to pendency of cases have been conceptualised in the document. “It was the first file he wanted to sign,” the functionary said. The national litigation policy has been drafted and redrafted for several years with successive governments deliberating on its contours. “There is a factor of ease of living in all the stakeholders related to litigation … All stakeholders, including litigants, advocates and others are part of it … the ministry has finalised the policy document,” Meghwal said. In UPA II, then law minister M Veerappa Moily had come out with a national litigation policy, but it never went forward. An official statement issued on June 23, 2010 had said the Centre has formulated a National Litigation Policy to reduce the cases pending in various courts in India under the National Legal Mission to reduce average pendency time from 15 years to 3 years. According to the ‘vision’ of the 2010 policy, it was based on the recognition that the government and its various agencies are the pre-dominant litigants in courts and tribunals in the country. “Its aim is to transform government into an efficient and responsible litigant. This policy is also based on the recognition that it is the responsibility of the government to protect the rights of citizens, to respect fundamental rights and those in charge of the conduct of government litigation should never forget this basic principle,” it had said. Responding to a question of arbitration, Meghwal said the government is working towards making India into an arbitration hub and some laws have been tweaked to enable the plans. “Why can’t the disputes (under arbitration) be settled here. Why should Indians go to Singapore, Dubai or London for arbitration,” he said. Source: Economic Times

May 23,2024 The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) today published its Annual Complaints Report, which offers a comprehensive analysis of advertisements that were considered objectionable in the fiscal year 2023–24. ASCI examined 10,093 complaints and investigated 8299 advertisements. The majority of violations were on account of misleading claims at 81%, followed by ads that promoted harmful situations or products at 34% (the same ad can be processed for multiple objections). Digital ads accounted for 85% of ads processed, and had a lower compliance rate of 75%, compared to 97% for print and TV. This raises serious questions about the online safety of consumers, as was highlighted last year as well. 94% of the ads that were processed were picked up suo moto by ASCI. 49% of the advertisements picked up by ASCI were not contested by the advertisers. A total of 98% of cases eventually required modification as they violated the ASCI Code. Healthcare emerged as the most violative sector, contributing to 19% of cases, followed by illegal offshore betting (17%), personal care (13%), conventional education (12%), food and beverage (10%), and realty (7%). Baby care emerged as a new contender in the top violators category, with influencer promotions contributing to 81% of babycare cases. Out of the 1575 advertisements processed in the healthcare sector, 1249 violated the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, 1954, and were reported to the sector regulator. 86% of the healthcare ads appeared on digital platforms. 1311 advertisements for illegal betting were sent to the appropriate authorities for further action. Of the 1064 ads that ASCI examined in personal care, 95% of them appeared online, with more than half (55%) being influencer non-disclosure cases. Celebrities continued to appear in ads that were in violation of the ASCI code. ASCI processed complaints against 101 ads featuring celebrities, 91% of which required modification. 104 celebrities appearing in these 101 ads were found to be in violation of the celebrity guidelines as they could not provide any evidence of due diligence. It may be noted that due diligence is also a requirement under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. The top five violative categories for celebrity violations were personal care (22%), food and beverages (21%), illegal/betting (20%), healthcare (9%), and durables (6%). In addition to processing objectionable ads through its own processes, mp. Besides the 1311 offshore illegal/betting ads escalated to the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and the 1249 healthcare ads reported to the Ministry of AYUSH for potential violations of the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, 1954, others included realty (493 ads), alcohol beverages (82 ads), and tobacco and tobacco based products (65 ads). To combat these trends, ASCI, under the aegis of the ASCI Academy has introduced a certification course called “The ‘ASCI Guide to Responsible Advertising”. The course, designed for students and professionals, aims to support the advertising ecosystem, achieve ethical advertising standards and compliance with the ASCI Code and various regulations, and reduce the incidence of objectionable advertising. Saugata Gupta, Chairman of ASCI, said, “As digital emerges as a dominant media in which advertisements thrive, ASCI has geared up to the challenges through constant investment in technology. We will continue to improve our processes and expertise to ensure nimble and transparent resolution of objectionable ads. At this critical juncture, we look forward to collaborating with all stakeholders to promote ethical advertising and calling out advertisements that eventually erode trust in advertising.” Manisha Kapoor, CEO & Secretary General of ASCI, said, “2023-24 has been a truly challenging year, and ASCI stepped up to this by focusing our efforts on digital. 3200 advertisements were shared with various regulators, such as MIB, Ayush, and MahaRera, for direct violations of the law. We see this as a continuing area of focus. Sectors like healthcare emerging at the top are a significant concern for all citizens. With the highest number of violative ads seen online, advertisers and platforms must work more closely with regulators and self-regulators to keep consumers protected. ASCI Academy’s recently launched e-learning courses on Responsible Advertising and Responsible Influencing is a significant step to increase the industry’s capacity to create ads with greater understanding of regulatory standards and ensure that consumers are not exposed to objectionable advertising in the first place.” Source: Economic Times

June 11,2024 New Delhi: Extending the Ayushman Bharat coverage to everyone aged above 70 years and the pan-India roll out of the U-WIN portal to digitise routine vaccinations are among the highlights of Narendra Modi’s new government’s 100-day agenda for the Union health ministry. In a brief interaction with senior officials after taking charge of the ministry on Tuesday, J P Nadda, who is also the BJP president, asked them to focus on the agenda, sources said. Prime Minister Modi while releasing the BJP’s Lok Sabha poll manifesto in April had announced that senior citizens above 70 years of age and the transgender community will be brought under the ambit of the Centre’s health scheme Ayushman Bharat Yojana. Launching the National Health Claims Exchange to ensure inter-operability and faster processing of health insurance claims, use of drone services to deliver medical essentials from AIIMS and other Institutes of National Importance in difficult terrains and providing cashless treatment services to ex-servicemen also feature among the 14 agenda items for the ministry, the official sources told PTI. The other key areas of focus in the 100-day plan include ease of doing business — ‘tatkal’ issuance of licence or registration in select food businesses under the FSSAI, deployment of Arogya Maitri Cubes in central government hospitals to meet health emergencies, providing financial support to the Banaras Hindu University’s Institute of Medical Sciences on the lines of AIIMS, and making operational the National Medical Register. Extending the Ayushman Bharat scheme to everyone aged 70 years and above is one of the top priorities of the government, the sources said. The modalities of the proposal are being worked out. Once finalised, the proposal will be sent to the Expenditure Finance Committee for approval of allocation of funds before being sent to the Cabinet, they said. The U-WIN portal — based on the Co-WIN Covid vaccination application’s design — for maintaining electronic registry of routine immunisations under the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) is at present being run on a pilot mode in two districts of each state or a Union Territory. The platform captures each and every vaccination event of children and pregnant women under the UIP. It is linked with Co-WIN and beneficiary records from Co-WIN can be accessed through U-WIN using the registered mobile-phone number for facilitation of registration of children. The National Medical Commission is in the process of creating the National Medical Register, a centralised repository of doctors practising in India as a part of which all doctors in the country will have a unique identification number by the 2024-end. A pilot project of the register is also underway. Source: Economic Times

June 11,2024 India will remain the fastest-growing major economy recording a steady growth of 6.7 per cent in the next three years including the current financial year, said a world bank report released on Tuesday. In India, growth is estimated to have picked up to 8.2 per cent in fiscal year (FY) 2023/24 (April 2023 to March 2024) — 1.9 percentage points higher than estimated in January, according to the World Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report. It further said global growth is projected to hold steady at 2.6 per cent in 2024 before edging up to an average of 2.7 per cent in 2025-26. That is well below the 3.1 per cent average in the decade before COVID-19. “The forecast implies that over the course of 2024-26 countries that collectively account for more than 80 per cent of the world’s population and global GDP would still be growing more slowly than they did in the decade before COVID-19,” it said. Growth in the South Asia (SAR) region is projected to slow from 6.6 per cent in 2023 to 6.2 per cent in 2024, mainly due to a moderation of growth in India from a high base in recent years. With steady growth in India, regional growth is forecast to stay at 6.2 per cent in 2025-26. Among the region’s other economies, growth is expected to remain robust in Bangladesh, though at a slower rate than in the past several years, and to strengthen in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. “India will remain the fastest-growing of the world’s largest economies, although its pace of expansion is expected to moderate. After a high growth rate in FY2023/24, steady growth of 6.7 per cent per year, on average, is projected for the three fiscal years beginning in FY2024/25,” the report said. This moderation is mainly due to a slowdown in investment from a high base. “However, investment growth is still expected to be stronger than previously envisaged and remain robust over the forecast period, with strong public investment accompanied by private investment,” it said. It further said that private consumption growth is expected to benefit from a recovery of agricultural production and declining inflation. Government consumption is projected to grow only slowly, in line with the government’s aim of reducing current expenditure relative to GDP, it added. According to the report, global inflation is expected to moderate to 3.5 per cent in 2024 and 2.9 per cent in 2025, but the pace of decline is slower than was projected just six months ago. Many central banks, as a result, are expected to remain cautious in lowering policy interest rates. Global interest rates are likely to remain high by the standards of recent decades — averaging about 4 per cent over 2025-26, roughly double the 2000-19 average, it said. In India, World Bank said inflation has remained within the Reserve Bank’s target range of 2 to 6 per cent since September 2023. However, apart from India, regional inflation, though below peak levels, has remained elevated, reflecting persistently high food price inflation from local food supply disruptions, and increased energy prices. Source: Economic Times

June 11,2024 The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a plea alleging discrepancies in the NEET-PG examination conducted in 2022 for admissions to post-graduate courses in various streams of medical sciences and seeking disclosure of answer keys and answer sheets. “These petitions are rendered infructuous due to the passage of time,” said a vacation bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah while dismissing a plea filed by a candidate named Pritish Kumar and others in 2022. The counsel for Kumar and others said the plea has not become infructuous as two out of the six petitioners would be taking up NEET-PG on June 23 this year. The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Post Graduate (NEET-PG) examination is conducted by the National Board of Examination (NBE) for admissions in various PG courses after the students complete MBBS, BDS and other equivalent courses. “The trouble is they (NBE) are not allowing us to access the answer keys, answer sheets, question papers (of NEET-PG 2022),” the lawyer said. The bench rejected the plea saying that it cannot keep it pending “unnecessarily”. Pritish Kumar and others had filed the plea alleging that there were mismatches in their NEET-PG 2022 scores and the NBE was not permitting re-evaluation. Source: Economic Times

June 07,2024 A recent investigation has brought to light a troubling issue within India’s prison system – a staggering number of wrongly incarcerated children are being held in adult prisons. A recent iProbono report, based on RTI responses, revealed that nearly 10,000 minors were wrongly locked up in adult prisons between Jan 2016 and Dec 2021. It is very likely that this number doesn’t reveal the entire picture because information was only sought from central and district jails in 28 states and two UTs, and only half of the prisons responded. This is scandalous for a nation that purportedly invests its future in its young. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 states that placing a child in an adult prison is unlawful. As per the Act, a child alleged to have committed an offence, or found guilty of an offence, is to be placed in an appropriate juvenile home – observation home, special home or a place of safety. Commenting on the JJ Act, the Supreme Court in 2005 had said, ‘The Act is not only a beneficent legislation, but also a remedial one. The Act aims to grant the care, protection, and rehabilitation of a juvenile vis-a-vis adult criminals.’ The first objective of the state is the promotion of the well-being of the juvenile, and the second is to bring about the principle of proportionality, by which proportionality of the reaction to the circumstances of both offender and offence, including the victim, should be safeguarded. The state has failed to implement the law on all counts. Affixing responsibility is critical, as is improving the juvenile corrections system by creating a network of observation homes, special homes and places of safety. Efforts to increase awareness of rights and access to legal aid will help protect rights of such hapless young Indians. Source: Economic Times

May 16,2024 The Supreme Court has declared that the the fundamental right to health encompasses the right of a consumer to be made aware of the quality of products being offered for sale by manufacturers, service providers, advertisers and advertising agencies. To protect this right, the Court directed that henceforth, before an advertisement is printed/aired/displayed, a Self declaration shall be submitted by the advertiser/advertising agency on the lines contemplated in Rule 7 of the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994. The direction was passed by a bench comprising Justices Hima Kohli and Ahsanuddin Amanullah in the Patanjali case (Indian Medical Assocaition v. Union of India and others) on May 7. In the copy of the order uploaded today, the Court made certain pertinent observations regarding the customers’ rights. It may be recalled that the case was filed by the IMA seeking regulation of the misleading medical advertisements published by Patanjali Ayurved Ltd. During the course of the case, the Court initiated contempt proceedings against Patanjali Ayurved, its founders Baba Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna. Advertisers and endorsers are equally responsible for issuing false and misleading advertisements In the order dated May 7, the Court commented on the responsibility of celebrities and influences who endorse products in advertisements. “We are of the firm view that advertisers/advertising agencies and endorsers are equally responsible for issuing false and misleading advertisements. Such endorsemehat are routinely made by public figures, influencers, celebrities etc. go a long way in promoting a product. It is imperative for them to act with a sense of responsibility when endorsing any product and take responsibility for the same, as reflected in Guideline No.8 of the Guidelines, 2022 that relates to advertisements that address/target or use children for various purposes and Guideline No.12 that lays down the duties of manufacturers, service providers, advertisers and advertising agencies to ensure that the trust of the consumer is not abused or exploited due to sheer lack of knowledge or inexperience. Guideline No.13 requires a due diligence to be undertaken for endorsement of advertisements and requires a person who endorses a product to have adequate information about, or experience with a specific good, product or service that is proposed to be endorsed and ensure that it must not be deceptive.” The Court also noted that there is no robust mechanism available for the customer to lodge complaints for violation of Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisements and Endorsements of Misleading Advertisements, 2022 framed by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs. “In view of the above and in the absence of any robust mechanism enacted in law to ensure that the obligations cast on the advertiser to adhere to stipulations in the Guidelines, 2022 in letter and spirit, it is deemed appropriate to invoke the powers vested in this Court under Article 32 of the Constitution of India for the enforcement of the fundamental right to health that encompasses the right of a consumer to be made aware of the quality of products being offered for sale by manufacturers, service providers, advertisers and advertising agencies. The Court directed that the Self-declaration shall be uploaded by the advertiser/advertising agency on the Broadcast Sewa Portal run under the aegis of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. As for the advertisements in the Press/Print Media/Internet, the Ministry is directed to create a dedicated portal within four weeks from May 7. Immediately on the portal being activated, the advertisers shall upload a Self-declaration before any advertisement is issued in the Press/Print Media/Internet. Proof of uploading the Self-declaration shall be made available by the advertisers to the concerned broadcaster/printer/publisher/T.V. Channel/electronic media, as the case may be, for the records. No advertisements shall be permitted to be run on the relevant channels and/or in the print media/internet without uploading the self- declaration as directed above. The above directions shall be treated as the law declared by this Court under Article 141 of the Constitution of India. Source: Livelaw