A State Consumer Commission must decide complaints with the President and at least one Member.

The opposite parties entered into an agreement dated 8 June 2001 with the developer for purchase of a 1,135 sq. ft. flat for ₹9,01,000 and claimed that they had paid the entire consideration and obtained possession, but that the deed of conveyance was not executed.

They accordingly filed a consumer complaint before the West Bengal State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission seeking execution and registration of the conveyance deed, compensation, and litigation costs.

The petitioner, who was opposite party no. 2 before the State Commission and a successor of the original landowner, contested the complaint on the grounds that he had no contract with the purchasers, had received no consideration, and could not be compelled to execute the conveyance deed.

The State Commission allowed the complaint, directed the opposite parties jointly and severally to execute the conveyance deed, and awarded compensation and costs; the order was passed and signed solely by the Presiding Member.

The petitioner challenged that order in revision before the High Court.

1. Whether the petitioner, as successor to the original landowner and a party to the development arrangement with the developer, could be compelled to execute a conveyance deed in favour of purchasers with whom he had no privity of contract and from whom he had received no consideration.

2. Whether the State Commission’s order was legally valid when it was passed and signed solely by a Member, without the President and at least one other Member sitting together, as required by Sections 14(2), 14(2-A), and 18 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

The Court applied the principle of privity of contract, under which a person who was not a party to the agreement for sale and who received no consideration under it cannot ordinarily be compelled to perform the contractual obligation of executing a conveyance deed.

It also applied Section 14(2) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, which required proceedings before a District Forum to be conducted by the President and at least one Member sitting together, and Section 14(2-A), which required the order to be signed by the President and the Member or Members who conducted the proceeding. By virtue of Section 18, those provisions applied, with necessary modifications, to proceedings before the State Commission.

The Court found that the purchasers’ agreement was with the developer, who had agreed to sell flats from the developer’s allocation under the development arrangement.

The petitioner’s predecessor had entered into a development agreement concerning the land, but there was no agreement for sale between the petitioner and the purchasers, nor any payment of consideration by the purchasers to the petitioner. Therefore, the petitioner could not be made personally liable to execute the conveyance merely because he succeeded to the original landowner’s interest.

Independently, the Court held that the impugned order suffered from a fundamental procedural defect: it had been passed and signed only by a Member of the State Commission, contrary to the mandatory requirements incorporated through Sections 14 and 18 of the Act of 1986.

It held that the petitioner could not be compelled, in the absence of privity of contract, to execute the conveyance deed in favour of the purchasers, and that the State Commission’s order was also invalid for want of the prescribed coram and signatures.

The State Commission was directed to reconsider and decide the complaint in accordance with the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 and the observations in the judgment.