Maharashtra consumer commissions must keep online hearing facilities available until the completion of proceedings, under a circular issued by the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission on Friday. The directive means consumers, lawyers and other parties will not have to appear in person at every hearing, provided they join through the designated online facility.
The circular prohibits commissions from imposing a fixed time window, seeking prior permission or requiring a separate application for participation through online hearings. All consumer commissions in the state have been instructed to begin implementing the facility within a week.
The direction follows complaints that online hearings were not operating in some commissions despite provisions for the facility. According to the report, lawyers and parties have faced inconvenience because certain commissions restricted the timings for online participation, while others imposed complicated procedural conditions.
Under the new instructions, the online hearing link must be published on the daily cause list of each commission. Lawyers and parties will be able to join online when their matter is called. This places responsibility on commissions to make the access details visible as part of their routine daily listing rather than treating virtual participation as an exception.
The prescribed working hours for the commissions are 10.30 am to 1 pm and 2 pm to 4.30 pm. The online facility is required to remain available during the commission’s working process, and the circular does not permit local officials to restrict access through additional time-based conditions or application requirements.
The directive also carries an administrative warning. Officials who avoid implementing the facility despite having the necessary technical arrangements may face an entry in their service records. The warning makes implementation responsibility an institutional matter rather than leaving online access to the discretion of individual benches or administrative staff.
The circular was issued by B. V. Burande, registrar (legal) of the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission. It establishes a uniform online-hearing requirement for consumer commissions across the state, addressing the uneven availability of a facility that was already provided for under the law.
For consumers, the immediate change is the removal of repeated travel as a routine requirement for participating in proceedings. The directive is particularly relevant to parties whose cases are heard outside their place of residence, although the circular, as reported, does not specify any separate category of cases or users eligible for online participation.
The next implementation milestone is the one-week deadline given to all commissions to start the online hearing facility. Daily cause lists will also have to carry the relevant hearing links so that parties can access proceedings when their cases are called.
