Around 40 lawyers of Brahmapur Bar led by two senior lawyers of Consumer Court, namely Dr Siba Prasad Mishra and Kailash Chandra Mishra, served a notice addressed to the Principal Secretary to Government, Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department and the Secretary of State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, threatening to resort to a dharana in front of the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (DCDRC) here from November 23 if all the vacant posts advertised by the State Government for the CDRCs of districts are not filled up soon.
Mention may be made that, the State Government reportedly advertised for filling vacant posts for the office of CDRCs through a notice dated 23.7.21 and 21.08.21.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of India has directed the State Government to fill up the vacancies within eight weeks.
The lawyers alleged that due to the inactions of the Consumer Welfare Department of the State, the whole Consumer Disputes Redressal System in the State not only has been jeopardized, but also the consumers of the State are deprived of due justice.
As a result, thousands of consumer disputes “for unfair trade practice of the traders” are currently pending under different commissions thereby causing harassment to the consumers, the lawyers alleged.
The prominent ones who signed the memorandum included senior lawyer Sudhansu Sekhar Panda, Pradeep Kumar Panda, Harikrushna Pattnaik, Lakshminarayan Panigrahi, S Raj Gopal Rao, Banambar Das and several others.