Sri     Swapan Kumar Mahanty, President.

This is an application u/s.12 of the C.P. Act, 1986.

            The instant order arose out of a petition dated 29-05-2018 filed by the OP1 regarding non-maintainability of the consumer complaint.

            The Ld. Advocate for the OP1 Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co. Ltd. has submitted that complainant is a Partnership Firm and its only object is to earn profit and, as such, the object of the firm deemed to be commercial purpose and, therefore, the complainant cannot be categorized as “consumer” under the purview of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

            Per contra, the Ld. Advocate for the complainant has submitted that when the Op1 has already filed written version, the question of maintainability can very well be adjudicated at the time of final hearing of the case.  He has also urged that the complainant is a “consumer” as defined under the act and hiring of service by way of insurance policy cannot be equated as commercial purpose.

            Needless to say, in order to obtain relief under the scheme of the Act, the complainant must satisfy that Euro Express Courier is a consumer within the meaning of Section 2(1)(d) of the Act.  For proper understanding of the matter, it would be pertinent to reproduce the definition of Section 2(1)(d) of the C.P. Act, 1986 which runs as follows:-

            On perusal of the Partnership Deed annexed with the consumer complaint it would reveal that Smt. Sangita Asopa and Sri Debarun Chakraborty are the partners of the Complainant Firm.  Again the partnership deed dated 27-06-1997 clearly indicates that the Complainant Firm mainly carrying on business of courier services including its allied activities and its partners have equal power to engage employees to run the firm.

            The materials on record clearly indicate that complainant is a Partnership Firm.  The firm has to act through the partners.  The service of insurance availed by the Complainant Firm is for safe guard the commercial purpose.  as such, the question of livelihood and self-employment under these circumstances would not arise.  The Complainant Firm does the commercial activities for its partners and the question of livelihood by means of self-employment would not arise.

            We may state that in order to attract a case to be filed before the Consumer Fora the important ingredient could be that either availing of services or goods purchased it should be exclusively for the purpose of earning his livelihood by means of self-employment.  By no stretch of imagination a Partnership Firm could be treated as a person of goods bought and used by him/it and services availed by him/it exclusively for the purpose earning his/its livelihood by means of self-employment.

            Regard being had to the facts and circumstances and as well as having heard the Ld. Advocates appearing for the parties, we have no hesitation to hold that the complainant being a Partnership Firm cannot categorized as “consumer” within the meaning of Section 2(1)(d)(ii) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

            In the result, the petition dated 29-05-2018 filed by the OP1 challenging the maintainability of the consumer complaint should be allowed.

            Hence,

Ordered

That the petition dated 29-05-2018 filed by the OP1 is allowed on contest without any costs.

            Resultantly, the instant complaint is dismissed being not maintainable.

            However, this order will not debar