Sri Shyamal Gupta, Member
Feeling aggrieved and dissatisfied with the Order dated 31-01-2017, passed by the Ld. District Forum, Kolkata-II (Central) in CC No. 35 of 2017, this Appeal is moved by Sri Sudarshan Chakraborty.
In a nutshell, case of the Appellant was that he took financial assistance worth Rs. 2,00,000/- from the Respondent Bank for meeting the treatment cost of his wife. After paying 8th instalment, he approached the Respondent No. 1 for foreclosure of the said loan account. However, the Respondents refused to oblige him. Not only that, allegedly, the Respondents started levying different amounts in respect of the said loan account on one pretext or the other. Therefore, he filed the complaint case.
The Ld. District Forum dismissed the complaint case at the admission stage itself holding inter alia that in view of the debtor-creditor relationship between the parties, the complaint case was not maintainable.
On due consideration of the submission of the parties and after going through the material on record, we, however, found no logic in such contention.
Undisputedly, the Appellant is an account-holder of the Respondent Bank. As a banking organization, the Respondent Bank offers different kinds of financial services to its customers in lieu of pre-determined service charge, rendering loan to bank customers being one of the most important financial activities of the Bank.
The bone of contention of the complaint case revolves around non-furnishing of copy of the loan agreement to the Appellant and arbitrary imposition of different kinds of service charges by the Respondent Bank.
The nature of dispute in its true purport, in our considered opinion, contains all the requisite ingredients of a consumer dispute. As a customer of the Respondent Bank, the Appellant is definitely a bona fide consumer.
Thus, we find enough merit in this Appeal to remand the case to the Ld. District Forum for disposing the case on merit.
The Appeal, thus, stands allowed. Consequently, the impugned order stands set aside. Parties to appear before the Ld. District Forum on 07-05-2019 for fresh adjudication of the case on merit.
