Food supplies and Consumer Welfare Department in collaboration with the Centre for Consumer Law, National Law University Odisha organized a two day workshop on 24^th October- 25^th October, 2019 on “Consumer Welfare Framing on Draft Rules on Consumer Protection Act, 2019″. The resource persons included Mr. Bejon Misra (International Consumer Policy); Mr. Satyanarayan Dash (Additional Secretary, FSCW); Prof(Dr) Srikrishna Deva Rao, Vice Chancellor, NLUO; Mr. Aditya Rao (Partner, PLR Chambers); Mr. Akash Kumar (Assistant Professor of Law, NLUO); Mr. Rajat Solanki (Assistant Professor of Law, NLUO) and faculty advisors of the Centre Mr. Mayank Tiwari and Ms. Sudatta Barik. The workshop was attended by various activists, advocates, students amongst other stakeholders. The Consumer law regulates our daily transactions and activities, hence, it is essential to make consumers aware about the rights and remedies that are available to them in case of a dispute. This event aimed to offer a better rationalization of the laws and regulations that bridge consumers under the consumer protection act 2019.

The first day of the event covered various themes beginning with the discussions on Overview of the 2019 Act, Unfair Trade practices, Direct Selling guidelines and Product liability. All stakeholders who had any valuable inputs were requested to submit a short write-up for the same to ensure record and possible insertion in model rules for the State of Odisha that shall be presented to the Hon’ble Cabinet Minister Shri Pratap Swain Ji. Mr. Misra stressed that the CCPA had been constituted to be a watchdog of day to day activities, an illustration in point being scanning newspapers to check for misleading advertisements under the vested suo motu powers. This cannot be a possible function for judicial organs like consumer forums whose primary aim is adjudication post complaints. The focus thus should be on the judicious exercise of power by this authority and not the basis of such authority.

Day 2 discussions observed sessions ranging from Mediation and E-filing of complaints to E-commerce and Consumer awareness which was followed by the discussion on initiatives taken by Consumer Forums and Councils. The event ended with all the stakeholders providing their valuable suggestions which included the need for timely disposal of the complaints to the importance for having female as President/ Member in District Consumer Dispute Redressal Forum.