Bhubaneswar: The magnitude of aggrieved consumers from Odisha who fall prey to the false claims of sellers and duped by the market is on the rise, data from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs claimed Tuesday.
According to the state-level data released by the ministry Tuesday, Odisha since April 2015 registered 15,305 complaints to the National Consumer Helpline for redressal. The magnitude as per the official figures is said to be only increasing.
The data claims that between 2015-2016, 2,530 complaints were received from Odisha to the National Consumer Helpline which increased to 4,195 in 2016-17 and to 6,701 in 2017-18. Moreover, in the current fiscal till June, 1,879 complaints have already been registered on the helpline from Odisha.
The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 has been enacted to provide for better protection of the rights of the consumers, including the rural consumers. Under the provisions of the Act, a three-tier quasi-judicial mechanism, called Consumer Fora, has been established at the district, state and national levels to provide simple, inexpensive and speedy redressal to consumer disputes.
The ministry claims that grants-in-aid are also released to states for creating consumer awareness in the respective states in their regional languages so as to further ensure that the campaign reaches the rural and backward areas of the country by way of focusing on hoardings, village mandis, agricultural regulated markets / vegetable markets at prominent places in rural areas.
Besides, the Department of Consumer Affairs runs a National Consumer Helpline with a toll free number 1800-11-4000 and a short code 14404, to deal with consumer grievances. Also, six zonal consumer helplines at Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Patna, Kolkata and Guwahati have been set up to attend to the consumer grievances in regional languages, the ministry said Tuesday.
BOX: CONSUMER COMPLAINTS FROM ODISHA:
| YEAR | COMPLAINTS |
| 2015-16 | 2530 |
| 2016-17 | 4195 |
| 2017-18 | 6701 |
| 2018 (Till June) | 1879 |
| Total (since 2015) | 15305 |
