India's consumer dispute redressal system, built on the promise of quick, affordable justice for ordinary buyers, is in a state of deep institutional crisis, with half of all state consumer commissions functioning without a president, nearly 90 of the country's 775 districts entirely without a consumer forum and over 500,000 cases pending as of 2024, a fifth of which have accumulated since 2020. Citing data from the government's CONFONET dashboard, the
Consumer Justice Report 2026, published in March 2026 by the India Justice Report (IJR) reveals that the average disposal time for a consumer case in India stands at 647 days — nearly two years — with the largest single category of cases, around 30,000, taking more than 365 days to resolve.
According to Maja Daruwala, chief editor of the IJR, India is positioning itself to become one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world and at the heart of this expansion sits the consumer. "If district forums are missing, vacancies persist, pendency stretches into years, and mediation remains ornamental, the consequences extend beyond individual grievances. Capital is locked up. Legal uncertainty constrains reinvestment. Market discipline weakens. Over time, these inefficiencies dampen gross domestic product (GDP) growth."
"The government is presently holding consultations across the country to amend the new law towards improving redress. The promise rests on refining the law, simplifying procedures and ramping up infrastructure. This is not a moment too soon. Without recalibration, the consumer remains an afterthought. Durable economic growth demands that the promise of redress keep pace with the promise of prosperity," she added.
The report, drawing almost entirely on Right to Information (RTI) responses, parliamentary replies, and publicly available government data, ranks states on 11 indicators across five themes — human resources, gender diversity, workload, infrastructure, and budgets — and finds that the gap between the statutory promise of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and the operational reality on the ground is severe, systemic, and widening.
Over Five Lakh Cases Pending; One in Three Stuck for More Than Three Years
Between 2020 and 2024, a total of 764,000 cases were filed across state and district consumer commissions. Of these, 88.5% were disposed of over the five-year period — a headline figure that appears encouraging. But the annual picture tells a more troubling story.
Case pendency increased by 21% between 2020 and 2024, reaching 515,000 pending cases by end-2024. Annual case clearance rates — measuring cases disposed in a given year against cases filed that year — declined from 108% in 2023 to 98% in 2024, meaning the system is no longer keeping pace with fresh filings.
Among state commissions that provided data, on average 35% of cases were pending for more than three years — far exceeding the statutory expectation of disposal within three to five months. In Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand, more than two in three cases were pending for over three years. In Uttar Pradesh, 61.8% of cases had remained unresolved for that long.
The law is explicit: Section 38(7) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 states that every complaint shall be disposed of within three months where no commodity testing is required and within five months where it is. The reality — with one in three cases pending beyond three years — represents a fundamental failure of statutory compliance.
Maharashtra, the state with the highest consumer case filings in the country at 91,449 over five years, managed to dispose of only 65% of them — the worst clearance rate among large and mid-sized states. Over 32,000 cases remain pending in Maharashtra alone.
The data from the government's CONFONET dashboard reveals that the number of cases disposed of within 30 days is barely 9,000, underlining how far the system falls short of the Consumer Protection Act's mandate of resolution within three to five months.
The hearings’ data compounds the concern. A consumer case requires an average of nine hearings before disposal, with the largest share of cases — around 18,000 — requiring only one or two hearings, suggesting quick dismissals or withdrawals rather than substantive adjudication. However, a significant volume of cases required between three and 20 hearings, and a small but notable cohort demanded more than 20 hearings, pointing to the protracted, adjournment-prone proceedings that have long plagued consumer forums and that the 2019 Act sought, but has so far failed, to eliminate.
90 Districts without a Consumer Forum
The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 mandates at least one district consumer disputes redressal commission (DCDRC) in every district of the country. As of 2025, only 685 district commissions existed against 775 districts — leaving 90 districts, or roughly one in nine, entirely without a consumer forum. Consumers in these districts are effectively denied the low-cost, lawyer-light redressal mechanism the law was designed to provide, and are instead forced to approach civil courts or abandon their claims entirely.
Even where district commissions exist, vacancy rates are severe. At the district level, 32% of president posts and nearly 39% of member posts were vacant in 2025. Kerala's district commissions had only two members against a sanctioned strength of 28 — a 93% vacancy rate. West Bengal's district commissions had a 65% president vacancy. Gujarat's district commissions showed 63% president and 60% member vacancies.
The report notes that persistent vacancies directly cause the accumulation of pending cases — and that the inability to fill leadership positions impinges on administrative supervision and the ability to spend allocated funds, resulting in systemic failure to convert financial allocations or legislative reform into meaningful service delivery.
Half the State Commissions Have No President
The most striking finding of the report concerns leadership vacancies at state consumer commissions. As of 2025, 17 of the 35 state consumer disputes redressal commissions (SCDRCs) across the country had no sitting president — the presiding officer responsible not only for forming benches and hearing disputes but also for approving financial expenditure, supervising district commissions and ensuring day-to-day administrative functioning.
The situation has deteriorated sharply in just five years. In 2021, only two SCDRCs — Goa and Jharkhand — were without a president. By 2025, that number had risen to 17. Only 10 state commissions maintained a president in place for all five years between 2021 and 2025.
The law requires that only a sitting or retired high court (HC) judge can be appointed as president of a state commission, a condition that significantly constrains the pool of eligible candidates and, in practice, has meant that state governments frequently delay or fail to initiate the appointment process in time. A Supreme Court committee in 2016 had already found instances where state governments took up to seven to 10 months to act on the selection committee's recommendations. The situation has visibly worsened since.
Member vacancies compound the problem. Of the 159 sanctioned member positions across 35 SCDRCs, 40% were unfilled in 2025. Seven SCDRCs had 50% vacancy among member positions. Karnataka — one of India's larger states — had 88% vacancy in its eight sanctioned posts and no president, recording the highest combined vacancy in the country. Tamil Nadu and Arunachal Pradesh had no members at all. Only Bihar and Haryana among large and mid-sized states had filled president and member posts.
In consequence, only six states and one Union Territory (UT) — Haryana, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Lakshadweep — complied with the minimum statutory requirement of one president and at least four members in 2025. The report points out that the absence of a president is not merely an administrative inconvenience: it directly prevents financial disbursements and makes it legally impossible to constitute a valid bench in many circumstances.
Mediation: A Dead Letter
One of the significant innovations of the 2019 Act was the formal incorporation of mediation into the consumer dispute resolution process, with dedicated mediation cells and a full chapter of rules. The report's findings on mediation are stark: it has simply not been implemented.
Among 21 state commissions, only 163 mediators were empanelled as of 2025. Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Delhi, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh reported not a single trained mediator. Of the 23 state commissions that provided mediation data, only nine had referred any cases to mediation at all between 2022 and March 2025 — a combined total of just 134 cases, with an overall settlement rate of 20%. Fourteen state commissions, including West Bengal, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, had not referred a single case to mediation in four years.
The report attributes the failure partly to mediator fees, with the government itself acknowledging in 2023 that parties were reluctant to pay mediators and capping fees at ₹3,000 for district commission cases and ₹5,000 for state commission cases — to be paid from the Consumer Welfare Fund. But even after this reform, referrals have remained negligible.
Lok Adalat referrals tell a similar story. In 2022, 1,463 consumer cases were referred to Lok Adalats by state commissions. By 2024, that number had fallen 70% to 446 cases.
Women Almost Absent from Leadership
The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 mandates that at least one woman be included among the president or members of every commission. The report finds this minimal benchmark is met in most cases — but rarely exceeded, and in some cases not even met.
As of 2024, only Delhi and Sikkim had a woman president among all SCDRCs that provided data. Kerala, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh had the lowest representation of women among presidents and members. Women's share among state commission presidents and members declined from an average of 35% in 2021 to 29% in 2025 across the 14 SCDRCs that provided five-year data. Nine SCDRCs failed to meet their own state-mandated women's reservation quotas in staff appointments.
Jharkhand's state commission had an all-male staff. Maharashtra, Odisha, Assam, and Uttarakhand each had just one woman on their staff.
Insurance, Housing, Banking Dominate Filings
An analysis of 2.85mn (million) cases filed across all commission between 2010 and 2024 — drawn from the government's CONFONET dashboard — found that three sectors consistently dominated consumer complaints: insurance, housing, and banking. Together these three sectors account for nearly half of all consumer cases filed in the country. Medical and insurance cases grew sharply in the post-pandemic years, rising from 24% of all consumer cases between 2016 and 2019 to 30% between 2021 and 2024.
