MATHURA, India — After almost 22 years and more than 100 hearings, a railway passenger in India has won a legal battle over being overcharged by 20 rupees (25 cents) for a pair of tickets.
The BBC reports that Tungnath Chaturvedi, a lawyer in the state of Uttar Pradesh was charged 90 rupees instead of 70 in 1999 for tickets between Mathura and Moradabad, a trip by rail of about 175 miles. After he failed to get a refund from the ticket agent, he filed a case against Indian Railways’ North Eastern Railway, as well as the ticket clerk, in consumer court. The railway fought the case, saying it should be heard by a railway claims tribunal, but Chaturvedi won a 2021 Supreme Court allowing the case to be heard by the consumer court.
Indian consumer courts specifically deal with cases related to services, but are overburdened and cases can take 10 to 15 years to be decided.
In that court’s ruling last week, the railway was ordered to pay a fine of 15,000 rupees ($188), plus the 20 rupees with 12% interest per year. If the payment is not made within 30 days, the interest rate increases to 15%.
“It’s not the money that matters,” Chaturvedi told the BBC. “This was always about a fight for justice and a fight against corruption, so it was worth it. Also, since I am an advocate myself, I didn’t have to pay money to a lawyer or bear the cost of traveling to the court. That can get quite expensive.”
There’s got to be a few good lawyer jokes in this story. Almost reads like a story from “The Onion” (if there’s an equivalent satirical publication in India?)
Here’s what I read in a recent on-line edition of the Detroit Free Press (www.freep.com): A court in Michigan voided all parking tickets in Saginaw because law enforcement didn’t get a search warrant before chalking the tires.
Our legal system has defied any ability of The Onion’s editorial staff to describe it. Our courts are beyond parody.
Someone complained that the chalk was graffiti?
Sounds like India’s legal system is almost as bad as our own.
It’s actually worse, but their Supreme Court works better ‘ve read, much larger legal body of jurists.
FROM WIKIPEDIA: “Initially, the Constitution of India provided for a Supreme Court with a chief justice and 7 judges. In the early years, a full bench of the Supreme Court sat together to hear the cases presented before them. As the work of the Court increased and cases began to accumulate, Parliament increased the number of judges (including the Chief Justice) from the original 8 in 1950 to 11 in 1956, 14 in 1960, 18 in 1978, 26 in 1986, 31 in 2009, to 34 in 2019. As the number of the judges has increased, they sit in smaller benches of two or three (referred to as a division bench) —coming together in larger benches of five or more (referred to as a constitution bench) when required to settle fundamental questions of law. A bench may refer a case before it to a larger bench, should the need arise.”