Summary
The Court directed the National Consumer Commission to receive a builder’s written statements filed four days beyond the ordinary forty-five-day limit. The response period expired while the Supreme Court’s COVID-19 limitation-extension order of 23 March 2020 remained operative, so the filing received its benefit. The Court retained the ordinary statutory limit while applying the exceptional extension to these proceedings.
Issues
- Whether the operative COVID-19 limitation-extension order protected written statements filed beyond the ordinary consumer-law response limit.
Provisions considered
- Section 38(2)(a), Consumer Protection Act, 2019The Court recognised the ordinary thirty-day response period, extendable by fifteen days, but applied the Supreme Court’s operative pandemic extension to the filing in these cases.
Held
- The ordinary rule against receiving a response beyond forty-five days did not defeat the benefit of the Supreme Court’s order extending limitation from 15 March 2020, which remained operative when the response period expired in August 2020. That extension covered these proceedings and justified receiving the written statements filed four days later.
- The National Commission must take the written statements on record and proceed expeditiously according to law; the underlying flat-delivery and refund claims were not decided.
Result
Appeals allowed; National Commission order set aside and written statements directed to be taken on record. No order as to costs.