Service and Deficiency

In one line

Service is anything made available to potential users for a consideration, and deficiency is any shortcoming in the way it is performed.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 2(42) of the Consumer Protection Act 2019 defines service as service of any description which is made available to potential users, including but not limited to the provision of facilities in connection with banking, financing, insurance, transport, processing, supply of electrical or other energy, telecom, boarding or lodging or both, housing construction, entertainment, amusement or the purveying of news or other information, but not including the rendering of any service free of charge or under a contract of personal service; and section 2(11) defines deficiency as any fault, imperfection, shortcoming or inadequacy in the quality, nature and manner of performance which is required to be maintained by or under any law or has been undertaken to be performed in pursuance of a contract or otherwise, and includes any act of negligence or omission or commission which causes loss or injury to the consumer, and the deliberate withholding of relevant information from the consumer.

The definition of service, taken apart

"Of any description". The list of banking, financing, insurance, transport and the rest is illustrative and the words "but not limited to" say so. Anything made available to potential users is capable of being a service.

"Made available to potential users". The service must be offered to the public or a section of it, not performed as a private favour.

Two exclusions. A service rendered free of charge, and a service rendered under a contract of personal service.

The second exclusion is narrow, and the case that explains it is the leading case on medical services.

What "deficiency" adds

Section 2(11) is wider than a bare failure to perform. Besides any fault, imperfection, shortcoming or inadequacy in the quality, nature and manner of performance, it includes two things expressly:

any act of negligence or omission or commission by the service provider which causes loss or injury to the consumer; and

the deliberate withholding of relevant information from the consumer.

The second is new with the Act of 2019 and it matters: a provider who conceals a material fact commits a deficiency even if the service he performed was otherwise faultless.

The two cases that fix the reach of "service"

Facts. Lucknow Development Authority v. M.K. Gupta, AIR 1994 SC 787, decided on 5 November 1993. Allottees complained to the consumer forums that statutory development authorities had delayed possession of houses, failed to complete flats within the stipulated time, and built defectively. The authorities argued that a statutory body performing a statutory function was not amenable to the Act, and that housing became a service only when the Act was amended in 1993.