GetNyay Data · India consumer justice tracker
The law promises three months. The queue is 3.81 years.
India’s consumer commissions are required to try to decide a case within three months. 5,74,333 were waiting in January 2026. At the rate cases were decided in 2025, clearing that queue alone would take 3.81 years — before a single new complaint is filed. Every figure here is read out of the government document it came from.
How long does a consumer case take in India?
No government source publishes an average time to disposal, so nobody can honestly quote one. What is published is the size of the queue and the rate it is cleared: 5,74,333 cases were pending in January 2026 and 1,50,581 were disposed of during 2025 — 3.81 years, or about 1,392 days, of work already in hand. Section 38(7), Consumer Protection Act, 2019 allows 3 months for a whole case, or 5 where goods must be tested.
Key takeaways
- The work already waiting is 15.3 times the period the Act allows for deciding a whole complaint.
- The commissions cleared more than they received in 2022 and 2023. They have not since: 92.4% in 2025, and 90.5% in the first two months of 2026.
- 75.9% of pending cases sit in the District Commissions — and 89.1% of vacant bench posts are there too.
- 916 of 2,286 sanctioned posts of president and member were vacant in the table laid before Parliament on 24 March 2026 — 40.1% of the bench.
- Mediation, which the Act created to keep disputes out of this queue, took 134 referrals across 2022 to the first quarter of 2025.
The headline numbers
Four figures, each traceable to a dated document listed at the foot of this page.
Finding 1 — the statutory deadline against the actual queue
The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 requires a commission to endeavour to decide a complaint within three months of the opposite party receiving notice, or five months where goods have to be analysed or tested. Set that against the work already waiting.
Time to clear the existing queue, against the statutory deadline
Years · at the 2025 disposal rate, assuming no new case is filed · a GetNyay calculation from two published figures
- The queue as it stands
- What the Act allows
The waiting work is 15.3 times the period the law allows for a whole case. This is a floor, not a forecast: it holds disposal at the 2025 rate and assumes nobody files anything new. In 2025, 1,62,896 people did.
Show these figures as a table
| Measure | Years | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory period, Section 38(7), Consumer Protection Act, 2019 | 0.25 | Published |
| Work waiting at the 2025 disposal rate | 3.81 | GetNyay calculation |
| The same, on the other published 2025 reading | 3.82 | GetNyay calculation |
Derivation: 5,74,333 cases pending in January 2026, published in Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2069, divided by the 1,50,581 cases disposed during 2025, published in Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 886. It assumes disposal continues at that rate and that no further case is filed. The deadline is Section 38(7), Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
How this number is built
5,74,333 cases pending in January 2026, divided by the 1,50,581 cases disposed of during 2025. Both are published; the division is ours. We publish it because the two numbers are always reported separately and never against each other.[2][1]
Two published readings of the same year. The annexure laid before Parliament three times gives 1,62,896 cases filed and 1,50,581 disposed in 2025. Two other answers say, in prose, “In 2025, 1,62,474 cases were filed and 1,50,197 disposed of”. We use the annexure reading because it is part of a five-year table whose every column reconciles to its own printed totals. On the other reading the queue is 3.82 years rather than 3.81 years, so the finding does not turn on the choice.[2][3]
Finding 2 — the commissions used to clear more than they received. They no longer do.
In 2022 and 2023 the consumer commissions disposed of more cases than were filed, and the queue shrank. In 2024 and 2025 they did not, and it grew again. The first two months of 2026 continue the later pattern.
Cases disposed as a share of cases filed
Per cent · above the dashed line the queue shrinks, below it the queue grows
The clearance rate fell from 106.6% in 2023 to 92.4% in 2025. Two consecutive years below the line put 27,175 cases back onto a queue that was already large.
Show these figures as a table
| Period | Filed | Disposed | Clearance rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 1,49,412 | 1,01,739 | 68.1% |
| 2022 | 1,75,680 | 1,82,868 | 104.1% |
| 2023 | 1,74,284 | 1,85,779 | 106.6% |
| 2024 | 1,73,181 | 1,58,321 | 91.4% |
| 2025 | 1,62,896 | 1,50,581 | 92.4% |
| 2026 to 28 Feb | 23,768 | 21,500 | 90.5% |
Filed and disposed totals published in Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 886 and repeated in Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question No. 3571; the part year in Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 4255. The disposal column counts cases decided during the year, including cases filed in earlier years — the annexure prints that qualification in its own column heading. So a jurisdiction can dispose of more cases than it received, and several do. This is a throughput measure, not a share of the backlog cleared.
* 1 January to 28 February 2026 — a part year, shown because it is the most recent figure published, not because it is comparable to a full one.
Cases filed against cases disposed
Both series count cases before the commissions, so they share one scale
- Filed
- Disposed
The commissions have never disposed of fewer cases than in 2021, and never received more than in 2022. What changed after 2023 is that the two lines crossed back over: 12,315 more cases came in than went out in 2025.
Show these figures as a table
| Period | Filed | Disposed | Net change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 1,49,412 | 1,01,739 | +47,673 |
| 2022 | 1,75,680 | 1,82,868 | -7,188 |
| 2023 | 1,74,284 | 1,85,779 | -11,495 |
| 2024 | 1,73,181 | 1,58,321 | +14,860 |
| 2025 | 1,62,896 | 1,50,581 | +12,315 |
| 2026 to 28 Feb | 23,768 | 21,500 | +2,268 |
Cases filed with, and disposed by, the National Commission, all 35 State Commissions and every District Commission, as tabled in Parliament. The disposal column includes cases decided during the year that were filed in earlier years — the annexure says so in its own heading — so a year can show more disposals than filings. Published in Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 886 and, for the part year, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 4255.
Where the pending cases sit
Share of 5,74,333 pending, January 2026
Three in four pending cases sit at the district level — the tier an ordinary complainant uses, and the tier with 39.4% of its bench posts vacant.
Show these figures as a table
| Tier | Cases pending | Share |
|---|---|---|
| District Commissions | 4,36,029 | 75.9% |
| State Commissions | 1,21,922 | 21.2% |
| National Commission (NCDRC) | 16,382 | 2.9% |
| All tiers | 5,74,333 | 100% |
Published in Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2069, answered 11 February 2026. The three tiers are printed with a total of 5,74,333, which is what they add to.
Finding 3 — the benches are not full
916 of 2,286 sanctioned posts of president and member were vacant in the table laid before the Rajya Sabha on 24 March 2026 — 40.1% of the bench. 89.1% of those vacancies are at the district level, which is also where 75.9% of the backlog sits. Most coverage reports one of those two numbers without the other.
| Tier | President posts | Vacant | Member posts | Vacant | Vacancy rateGetNyay calculation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| National Commission | 1 | 0 | 11 | 2 | 16.7% |
| State Commissions | 36 | 19 | 167 | 79 | 48.3% |
| District Commissions | 669 | 260 | 1,402 | 556 | 39.4% |
| All tiers | 706 | 279 | 1,580 | 637 | 40.1% |
More than half the State Commissions have no president
19 of the 36 sanctioned State Commission president posts were vacant — 52.8%. A State Commission without a president cannot constitute a bench in the ordinary way, so the vacancy is not a staffing statistic; it is the reason a hearing does not happen. The National Commission, by contrast, had 2 of its 11 member posts vacant and its president in place.[5]
Two readings that do not reconcile
Two answers three months apart give different district-level vacancy counts: 169 district president posts and 379 district member posts vacant as on 31 December 2025, against 260 and 556 in the table laid before the Rajya Sabha on 24 March 2026. The state-level figures barely move over the same period. No explanation for the difference is given in either answer, and neither carries a note reconciling it to the other, so both readings are published here with their dates and neither is presented as a correction of the other.
| Reading | State | District | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| as on 31 December 2025 | 93 | 548 | 641 |
| tabled 24 March 2026 | 98 | 816 | 914 |
The later reading is the one this page calculates from, because it is the only one that gives sanctioned strength alongside vacancies — without which no vacancy rate can be built.[1][5]
Finding 4 — mediation is barely used
Cases referred to mediation by state commissions between 2022 and March 2025:
134
27 of them settled. 14 states referred no case at all.[6]
What the Act asked for
Sections 37, 74 and 75 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 require the commissions to keep a panel of mediators and to refer a dispute to mediation where it has elements amenable to settlement. The route exists precisely to keep disputes out of the queue Finding 1 measures. Across the 23 state commissions that supplied mediation data, 9 used it. The same responses record 163 trained mediators, in 15 of the 21 commissions that answered on mediators at all.
What we do not do with this number. We do not divide it by the 5,74,333 pending. Referrals reported by state commissions in response to Right to Information requests, compiled by the India Justice Report. It covers the 23 state commissions that supplied mediation case data, not all 35, and runs from 2022 to March 2025. The pending total is a departmental figure for all three tiers in January 2026. Setting one against the other would produce a percentage that describes neither, so the two are shown side by side and the division is left undone.
“RTI data show that only 134 cases were referred to mediation nationwide by nine state commissions out of the 23 which provided mediation case data, with an overall settlement rate of 20.2%.”
What about RERA?
A homebuyer chooses between a consumer commission and their State real estate authority, so the natural question is which is faster. It cannot be answered from published data, and the reason is worth setting out rather than filling in.
RERA authorities do not publish time to disposal
Both forums have a statutory clock — three months for a consumer commission, sixty days for a real estate authority — and neither publishes how long a case actually takes. The difference is what else is published. Consumer commissions publish pendency by tier, and filings and disposals year by year and State by State, so a queue can at least be measured against a disposal rate. Central reporting on RERA gives one cumulative national count of complaints disposed, with no annual split, no pendency figure and no filing-to-order timeline. There is nothing to divide, so this page publishes no RERA speed figure and no comparison chart. Anyone who tells you one forum is faster than the other is estimating.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs describes the sixty-day provision in its own words: “RERA also provides for a fast-track dispute resolution mechanism by making the provision of disposal of matter within 60 days.”[9]
| Measure | Figure | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| States and Union Territories with an authority | 35 | As at 4 September 2025 |
| Appellate tribunals set up | 29 | As at 4 September 2025 |
| Adjudicating officers appointed | 27 | As at 4 September 2025 |
| Complaints disposed, nationwide | 1,47,383 | Cumulative, no annual split published |
| Complaints pending | not published | — |
| Time from filing to final order | not published | Statutory provision is 60 days |
We ask for RERA disposal timelines in every update. If a State authority publishes time from filing to final order, or an annual split of complaints received and disposed, tell us and it will be added here with its source.[8]
If you are choosing a forum rather than counting one, our guides on the RERA complaint format and on filing a consumer complaint set out what each route actually requires.
Every State and Union Territory
Workload and bench strength for all 36 jurisdictions, exactly as tabled in Parliament. Sort any column, or filter to your State. Cases filed and disposed cover 2021 to 2025; bench posts are the 24 March 2026 reading.
36 of 36 jurisdictions
| Maharashtra | 94,469 | 67,338 | 71.3% | 135 | 39 | 28.9% | 40 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uttar Pradesh | 88,722 | 1,00,234 | 113.0% | 246 | 66 | 26.8% | 79 |
| Gujarat | 83,686 | 68,256 | 81.6% | 138 | 93 | 67.4% | 38 |
| Rajasthan | 67,621 | 58,387 | 86.3% | 146 | 48 | 32.9% | 37 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 66,937 | 77,243 | 115.4% | 133 | 45 | 33.8% | 48 |
| Haryana | 61,173 | 44,714 | 73.1% | 71 | 13 | 18.3% | 22 |
| Karnataka | 49,038 | 53,612 | 109.3% | 108 | 35 | 32.4% | 30 |
| Kerala | 43,589 | 32,525 | 74.6% | 47 | 41 | 87.2% | 14 |
| Punjab | 38,337 | 39,741 | 103.7% | 74 | 25 | 33.8% | 23 |
| Tamil Nadu | 33,499 | 35,189 | 105.0% | 100 | 30 | 30.0% | 30 |
| DelhiUT | 27,139 | 27,158 | 100.1% | 35 | 9 | 25.7% | 10 |
| West Bengal | 25,569 | 22,901 | 89.6% | 89 | 48 | 53.9% | 18 |
| Odisha | 24,930 | 23,801 | 95.5% | 98 | 61 | 62.2% | 30 |
| Telangana | 19,893 | 19,801 | 99.5% | 41 | 3 | 7.3% | 12 |
| Bihar | 19,497 | 15,175 | 77.8% | 119 | 90 | 75.6% | 38 |
| Chhattisgarh | 15,564 | 18,014 | 115.7% | 82 | 39 | 47.6% | 27 |
| Andhra Pradesh | 14,721 | 13,075 | 88.8% | 56 | 9 | 16.1% | 17 |
| Himachal Pradesh | 10,280 | 8,710 | 84.7% | 31 | 9 | 29.0% | 12 |
| ChandigarhUT | 9,213 | 9,172 | 99.6% | 11 | 1 | 9.1% | 2 |
| Jharkhand | 6,954 | 6,477 | 93.1% | 77 | 67 | 87.0% | 24 |
| Uttarakhand | 6,626 | 6,835 | 103.2% | 44 | 14 | 31.8% | 13 |
| Assam | 2,507 | 2,292 | 91.4% | 74 | 25 | 33.8% | 23 |
| Tripura | 1,536 | 1,318 | 85.8% | 15 | 4 | 26.7% | 4 |
| Goa | 1,240 | 1,170 | 94.4% | 11 | 3 | 27.3% | 2 |
| PuducherryUT | 517 | 545 | 105.4% | 8 | 3 | 37.5% | 1 |
| Mizoram | 411 | 396 | 96.4% | 37 | 14 | 37.8% | 11 |
| Jammu & KashmirUT | 406 | 247 | 60.8% | 35 | 18 | 51.4% | 10 |
| Manipur | 372 | 266 | 71.5% | 14 | 9 | 64.3% | 3 |
| Meghalaya | 277 | 376 | 135.7% | 26 | 1 | 3.8% | 7 |
| Sikkim | 206 | 85 | 41.3% | 23 | 3 | 13.0% | 6 |
| Arunachal Pradesh | 144 | 110 | 76.4% | 66 | 20 | 30.3% | 18 |
| Nagaland | 101 | 51 | 50.5% | 51 | 10 | 19.6% | 11 |
| D&N Haveli and Daman & DiuUT | 81 | 2 | 2.5% | 8 | 6 | 75.0% | 3 |
| A&N IslandsUT | 74 | 65 | 87.8% | 8 | 3 | 37.5% | 1 |
| LakshadweepUT | 8 | 2 | 25.0% | 8 | 2 | 25.0% | 1 |
| LadakhUT | not published | not published | — | 9 | 8 | 88.9% | 0 |
| National Commission | 20,116 | 24,005 | 119.3% | 12 | 2 | 16.7% | — |
| Total as printed in the annexures | 8,35,453 | 7,79,288 | 93.3% | 2,274 | 914 | — | 665 |
Maharashtra took the most work over the five years — 94,469 cases filed — followed by Uttar Pradesh with 88,722 and Gujarat with 83,686. Clearance rates across those three range from 71.3% to 113.0%. The CSV carries every year separately rather than only the five-year sum.[1]
Read this table carefully. The disposal column counts cases decided during the year, including cases filed in earlier years — the annexure prints that qualification in its own column heading. So a jurisdiction can dispose of more cases than it received, and several do. This is a throughput measure, not a share of the backlog cleared.
Ladakh has no case-flow row in any of the three annexures that carry one. The February 2026 answer also records nil District Commissions there, while the March 2026 answers record two District Commissions with four sanctioned member posts, three of them vacant — that is, one member in post. The later reading is the one shown for posts.
What an independent audit of the same system found
The India Justice Report's Consumer Justice Report 2026, published on 18 March 2026, is the first nationwide survey of consumer commission capacity. It is compiled on a different basis from the departmental figures above and is presented separately here for that reason.
An increase of 87,545 cases, or 21%, over the five years to 2024. The 2019 base is a figure the report takes from a parliamentary reply for all 35 States and Union Territories.
Of the 7.6 lakh cases filed in 35 State Commissions and 685 District Commissions over those five years. Twelve States disposed of more cases than they received.
The average across the 19 State Commissions that supplied the data for 2025. Kerala reported 79.2%; Andhra Pradesh 4.8%.
In 2025 — a 50% vacancy rate at the head of the State Commissions. Only ten State Commissions had a president in every year from 2021 to 2025.
The Act requires one in each district. Only 646 district president posts were sanctioned for the 685 commissions that exist.
Women’s average share of president and member posts across the 14 State Commissions that supplied gender data for all five years, 2021 to 2025. The low was 23.2% in 2024.
Why this is a separate section. The Consumer Justice Report 2026 compiles Right to Information responses from state and district commissions alongside parliamentary answers, and reports on the commissions that answered rather than on all of them. Its pendency series is built from a different parliamentary reply and a different portal extract than the departmental figures above, so the two are not the same count and are never added together here.[6]
The full dataset
Every annual figure, with the two calculated columns marked. Copy it, chart it, check it against the sources listed below.
| Period | Cases filed | Cases disposed | Clearance rate (%)GetNyay calculation | Net change in the queueGetNyay calculation | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 1,49,412 | 1,01,739 | 68.1% | +47,673 | Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 886 |
| 2022 | 1,75,680 | 1,82,868 | 104.1% | -7,188 | Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 886 |
| 2023 | 1,74,284 | 1,85,779 | 106.6% | -11,495 | Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 886 |
| 2024 | 1,73,181 | 1,58,321 | 91.4% | +14,860 | Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 886 |
| 2025 | 1,62,896 | 1,50,581 | 92.4% | +12,315 | Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 886 |
| 2026 to 28 Feb | 23,768 | 21,500 | 90.5% | +2,268 | Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 4255 |
What we deliberately did not calculate
- Why is there no State-wise figure for cases pending?
- It has been asked for in Parliament and not supplied. Rajya Sabha Question 3571 of 24 March 2026 asked for pending cases before the District, State and National Commissions State-wise for the last five years; the annexure that came back gives cases filed and disposed, not cases pending. Lok Sabha Question 886 asked the same thing and returned the same table. Pendency is published only as three national tier totals, so no State-level queue can be built from published data.
- Why not divide mediation referrals by the pending total?
- They are different collections. The 134 referrals come from Right to Information responses given by 23 state commissions and cover 2022 to March 2025; the 5.74 lakh pending is a departmental figure for all three tiers in January 2026. Dividing one by the other would produce a rate that describes neither, so the two figures are shown side by side and the division is left undone.
- Why is there no average time to disposal?
- No Government of India source publishes it for consumer commissions, and none publishes it for RERA. The Consumer Justice Report calculates an average of 448 days and seven hearings at the National Commission from portal data for 2010 to 2024, and that figure is the report’s, on its own dataset — it is not a departmental statistic and is not carried into the headline here.
- Why is the years-to-clear figure not a prediction?
- Because its central assumption is known to be false. It holds the disposal rate steady and assumes nothing new is filed, when 1.62 lakh new cases were filed in 2025 alone. It is a floor: the queue cannot clear faster than this unless disposal accelerates, and it will in fact take longer.
- Why is the e-Jagriti portal count not added to the annual series?
- The portal opened on 1 January 2025 and counts what passes through it. The commissions also carry cases filed before it existed, which the annual series counts and the portal does not. Adding them, or comparing them, would double-count some cases and miss others.
If you are here because you have a case
The queue above is the reason to get the paperwork right the first time. A complaint that is properly pleaded and properly served is the only part of the timeline you control. Filing is online through e-Daakhil and e-Jagriti, and hearings can be held by video at 10 National Commission benches and 35 State Commission benches.[1]
One more count, and why it is not in the table above
The Department also publishes what passes through the e-Jagriti portal, which opened on 1 January 2025: 1,30,550 cases filed and 1,27,058 disposed as at 13 November 2025. Cases filed on and disposed through the e-Jagriti portal since it launched on 1 January 2025. It is not the number of cases the commissions handled: the commissions also carry cases filed before the portal existed, and the annual series above counts those. The two must not be compared. It is here because the Department publishes it and a reader will meet it elsewhere, and it is outside the annual table for the same reason it is outside every calculation on this page.[7]
The same answer that gives the January 2026 pendency also names the commissions that exceeded a 100% disposal rate after July 2025: the National Commission and the State Commissions in Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand.[2]
Method
Where the figures come from
Answers given in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, Press Information Bureau releases, and one named research report that states its own dataset. Every figure was read out of the original PDF or release. Nothing on this page was taken from a news report of a document, and where a figure was available only in news coverage it was left off and recorded in the verification log instead. There are 9 source documents, each linked in full below.
How the tables were checked
Every column of every annexure reproduced here was reconciled against the TOTAL row the annexure itself prints — the totals were transcribed separately and then asserted against the sum of the data rows, so a single mistyped cell fails the check. That is twenty-nine column checks across five annexures, and all twenty-nine reconcile. The vacancy annexure appears in two different answers, and the two are identical across all 36 rows, which is a second independent check. Anyone can re-run it: npm run verify:consumer-justice.
What we calculate, and what we quote
A figure is either published or derived, and the page says which. Derived figures here are the years to clear the queue, the clearance rate, the net change in the queue, the tier shares of pendency and the bench vacancy rates. Each names its inputs where it appears. We do not estimate, project, round up or fill a gap: where a figure has not been published the page prints "not published" and says what was asked for and not answered.
Datasets that count different things
Four separate collections appear on this page. The departmental annexures count cases before the commissions. The e-Jagriti figures count what passes through one portal opened in January 2025. The Consumer Justice Report compiles Right to Information responses from the commissions that answered. RERA figures come from a different ministry regulating a different forum. They are never charted together, never added, and never divided by one another.
When a source contradicts itself
It happens twice here, and both are on the page rather than tidied away. Two answers give 1,62,474 cases filed in 2025 and two give 1,62,896; and the district-level vacancy count moves far more between December 2025 and March 2026 than three months should explain. Where two government readings of one measure disagree, both are published with their dates and the page says which one the arithmetic uses and why.
How often this changes
Figures are refreshed after each session of Parliament, and the update date at the top moves only when a figure does. The next scheduled revision is after the winter session of Parliament, December 2026.
Corrections log
No corrections have been made since this page was first published on 4 September 2026. When one is, it will appear here with its date and what changed, and the figure will not be quietly edited.
Who compiled this
Compiled and checked by Deepak Middha, a Chartered Accountant with over 15 years in the hedge fund and alternative-investment industry, who reads the primary document behind every regulatory figure published on GetNyay. He is not a lawyer and this page is not legal advice. Our editorial policy sets out how figures are sourced and corrected.
Questions about these figures
The things reporters and complainants ask most often, answered against the same sources.
How many consumer cases are pending in India?
5,74,333 cases were pending before India's consumer commissions in January 2026 — 4,36,029 in the District Commissions, 1,21,922 in the State Commissions and 16,382 at the National Commission. The figures were given to the Lok Sabha on 11 February 2026 in answer to Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2069.
How long does a consumer complaint take to decide in India?
No Government of India source publishes an average time to disposal, so nobody can honestly quote one. What can be measured is the size of the queue against the rate it is being cleared: 5,74,333 cases waiting in January 2026, and 1,50,581 disposed during 2025, which is 3.81 years of work before a single new complaint is filed. The law allows 3 months for a whole case.
What is the time limit for deciding a consumer case?
Section 38(7), Consumer Protection Act, 2019 requires a commission to endeavour to decide a complaint within 3 months of the opposite party receiving notice, or 5 months where goods have to be analysed or tested. The Act also says no adjournment should ordinarily be granted unless sufficient cause is shown and the reason is recorded in writing.
Did the consumer case backlog grow or shrink?
It shrank in 2022 and 2023, when the commissions disposed of more cases than they received, and it has grown in every period since. In 2025 they disposed of 92.4% of what came in, adding 12,315 cases to the queue; in the first two months of 2026 the rate was 90.5%. All the filing and disposal figures come from annexures tabled in Parliament in February and March 2026.
How many posts are vacant in the consumer commissions?
916 of 2,286 sanctioned posts of president and member were vacant in the table laid before the Rajya Sabha on 24 March 2026 — 40.1% of the bench. 89.1% of those vacancies are in the District Commissions, the tier that also holds 75.9% of the pending cases. An earlier answer, for 31 December 2025, put the State and District total at 641; both readings are published here with their dates.
Is consumer mediation used in India?
Barely. The Consumer Justice Report 2026 found 134 cases referred to mediation by 9 of the 23 state commissions that supplied mediation data, covering 2022 to the first quarter of 2025, of which 27 settled. 14 states did not refer a single case. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 requires the commissions to keep a panel of mediators and to use it.
Is a RERA complaint faster than a consumer commission complaint?
Nobody can say from published data, and this page does not guess. RERA has a sixty-day statutory provision and the consumer commissions have a three-month one, and neither regulator publishes how long a case actually takes. Central reporting on RERA is a single cumulative count — 1,47,383 complaints disposed as at 4 September 2025 — with no annual split and no pendency figure, so there is nothing to set a timeline against.
Which state has the busiest consumer commissions?
Maharashtra, with 94,469 cases filed between 2021 and 2025 and a clearance rate of 71.3% over the same period, against a bench vacancy rate of 28.9%. Every jurisdiction is in the sortable table on this page and in the CSV, with the figures exactly as the annexures print them.
Can I reuse these figures and charts in an article?
Yes. The compilation, the derived figures and the charts are published under CC BY 4.0 — reuse any of them with credit and a link to /data/consumer-justice. The underlying figures are Government of India material and each is linked to the document it came from. A ready citation line and both CSV files are on this page, and press queries to team@getnyay.in get a same-day reply.
Sources
Every document behind a figure on this page, linked to the original. Nothing here is sourced from a news report.
- 1
Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 886 — “Functioning of Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions”, answered 4 February 2026.
The number of commissions at each tier; District Commissions in each State and Union Territory (Annexure I); vacancies of president and member as on 31 December 2025 (Annexure II); cases filed and disposed by every jurisdiction for 2021 to 2025 (Annexure III); funds released under the Strengthening of Consumer Commissions scheme (Annexure IV); vacancies at the National Commission.
- 2
Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2069 — “Pending Cases in NCDRC”, answered 11 February 2026.
Cases pending before the National, State and District Commissions as of January 2026; the statutory disposal period under section 38(7); the commissions that exceeded a 100% disposal rate after July 2025; video-conferencing benches; a second reading of the 2025 filed and disposed totals; the same vacancy annexure as Question 886.
- 3
Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 3184 — “Consumer Protection and Expeditious Grievance Redressal Through Digital Justice”, answered 11 March 2026.
The 2025 filed and disposed totals repeated a second time in the same wording; non-resident complaints filed on e-Jagriti to 28 February 2026; National Consumer Helpline volumes and the refund it facilitated between April 2025 and January 2026.
- 4
Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 4255 — “Digital Consumer Justice and Enforcement of Consumer Commission Orders”, answered 18 March 2026.
Cases filed and disposed by every jurisdiction for 2024, 2025 and the part year to 28 February 2026 (Annexure I); grievances registered on the National Consumer Helpline by State (Annexure II); the average grievance disposal time on CPGRAMS.
- 5
Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question No. 3571 — “Pending Cases Before Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions”, answered 24 March 2026.
Sanctioned strength and vacancies of president and member for the National Commission and for every State and Union Territory at both tiers (Annexure II) — the only reading that gives sanctioned strength, so the only one a vacancy rate can be built from. Annexure I repeats the 2021 to 2025 case-flow table.
- 6
India Justice Report, Consumer Justice Report 2026 — “Consumer Justice Report 2026: Assessing Capacity of Redressal Commissions in India”, published 18 March 2026.
Mediation referrals, disposals and trained mediators from RTI responses; the pendency trend from 2019 to 2024; the share of cases pending over three years; women in state commission leadership; District Commissions against districts. Figures here were read out of the report itself, not out of coverage of it.
- 7
Press Information Bureau, Department of Consumer Affairs, Press release, PRID 2190535 — “e-Jagriti Revolutionizes Consumer Justice in 2025”, published 16 November 2025.
Filings and disposals on the e-Jagriti portal to 13 November 2025, and two two-month readings of portal filings against disposals. A portal count, not a commission-wide count.
- 8
Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Press release, PRID 2163844 — “Union Minister launches Unified RERA Portal at 5th Meeting of Central Advisory Council”, published 4 September 2025.
Real Estate Regulatory Authorities, appellate tribunals and adjudicating officers in place; projects and agents registered; complaints disposed by the authorities nationwide. The only dated statement of the cumulative RERA disposal total found in a primary source.
- 9
Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Press release, PRID 2291961 — “Implementation of RERA Act, 2016”, published 30 July 2026.
The Ministry’s own statement of the RERA disposal provision — that the Act makes provision for disposal of a matter within sixty days — given in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
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The compilation, the derived figures and the charts on this page are published by GetNyay under CC BY 4.0. The underlying figures are Government of India material taken from answers given in Parliament and from Press Information Bureau releases, except where a figure is attributed to the Consumer Justice Report 2026, which is the India Justice Report’s own work.
GetNyay, "India Consumer Justice Tracker", getnyay.in/data/consumer-justice, updated 4 September 2026. Compiled from Ministry of Consumer Affairs answers in Parliament, Press Information Bureau releases and the India Justice Report's Consumer Justice Report 2026.Charts may be reproduced with the same credit. For a specific cut of the data, a State-level breakdown, or a comment for a story, write to team@getnyay.in — we reply to press queries the same day.
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