In case of Puri Constructions Ltd v. Shailesh Gupta & Ors.,under Order I Rule 8 of the First Schedule to the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (CPC), Section 21 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, and Section 12(1)(c)1 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, the respondent and other complainants filed a consumer complaint against the petitioner Puri Construction Pvt. Ltd. before the NCDRC as a representative class action complaint. The complaint made clear that it was submitted to address the grievances of the 48 listed complainants as well as the general complaint of all customers impacted by price discrimination on the side of the opposing party in the Aanand Vilas project.
The complaint claimed that the application form given to the complainants and other investors in the petitioner's project did not include pertinent or substantial information about the project or the timeline for completion, and that the buyers/investors were forced to pay several fees, including Preferential Location Charges (PLC), parking fees, club furnishing fees, and fire fighting fees that were not included in the initial application. In addition, despite having paid 80–90% of the fees demanded by the petitioner, the complainants were still required to comply with all of the petitioner's allegedly unlawful demands, and the petitioner was selling identical flats to outsiders for almost half the price they were sold to the complainants.
It was argued that the claimed actions qualified as "unfair trade practices" under Section 2(r)(1)(ix)4 of the Act since the petitioner was allegedly stealing the investors' hard-earned money. The Act's definition of "complainant" as "one or more consumers if there are several consumers with the same interest" was used by the court. Additionally, it made reference to Brigade Enterprises v. Anil Kumar Virmani, in which the Supreme Court determined that commonality of interest was a requirement for allowing one or more consumers to file an application under Section 12(1)(c) of the Act on behalf of other people who were not individually implemented.
The Court determined that Section 22(1) of the Act rendered Section 12(1)(c) applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the NCDRC. Therefore, when the Consumer Forum grants an application under Section 12(1)(c), it amounts to the Consumer Forum giving its judicial seal to the applicants'/complainants' argument that everyone whose cause the complainants seek to advance is someone who is "so interested" in the complaint and the reliefs requested therein.
Accordingly, it was decided that Order I Rule 8 of the CPC applies mutatis mutandis to the consumer complaint submitted by the respondents by application of Section 13(6) of the Act since the respondents are "complainants" as defined in Section 2(1)(b)(iv) of the Act.
In the present case, the Court determined that the modification application was neither submitted following notice to every person on whose behalf a consumer complaint was made, nor was it endorsed by all of the complainants at the time, including those who had reacted to the initial NCDRC's notice.
It was decided that the NCDRC's ruling could not stand because the NCDRC was not authorized to state that a public notice was not required before approving the complaint's amendment, which sought to withdraw the first claim for a relief of possession.
Furthermore, it was determined that the NCDRC's position was completely in conflict with Order I Rule 8 of the CPC and, as a result, with Section 13(6) of the Act. This position would have allowed individuals who were interested in the relief sought in the original complaint to apply to the Consumer Forum separately and pursue their independent remedies and the court observed that "Where Order I Rule 8(4) expressly requires prior notice to "all persons so interested" in the class action complaint, that requirement cannot be substituted by first allowing the complaint to be amended by abandoning part of the relief sought and, thereafter, issuing a public notice to the persons on whose behalf the complaint was filed. That would amount to placing the cart before the horse."