On 24 August 2020 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and K.M. Joseph — held that DLF's failure to hand over possession of flats in 'Westend Heights', Begur, Bengaluru, within the contractual 36-month period constituted 'deficiency in service' under the Consumer Protection Act 1986; that flat-buyers were not confined to the meagre Rs 5 per square foot per month delay-compensation cap in the one-sided Apartment Buyer's Agreement; that the consumer forum could award just and reasonable compensation; and that 6% per annum simple interest on the entire amount paid was awardable in addition to the contractual delay compensation. The judgment crystallised the one-sided clause doctrine months before its formal articulation in IREO Grace Realtech (January 2021).
On 15 April 2026, a two-judge bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan held that a bank receiving cheques for collection acts as an agent of the customer and is bound to present the instruments within the validity period; the failure to do so — resulting in the cheques becoming stale, without a reasonable explanation — constitutes deficiency in service under the Consumer Protection Act. The Court moderated the compensation, reducing the consumer-commission award from 10 per cent to 6 per cent of the cheque amount with 6 per cent interest. A digest of the holding and the doctrinal architecture for banking-agent liability.
The Supreme Court's review judgment of 10 December 2018, authored by Justice Ashok Bhushan for a two-judge bench (Bhushan + U.U. Lalit JJ), holds that the 2015 amendment to Section 8 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 — making reference to arbitration mandatory 'notwithstanding any judgment, decree or order' — does not displace the regime of special legislation that creates non-arbitrable in rem statutory remedies. An arbitration clause in a builder-allottee agreement does not oust the jurisdiction of the consumer forum; the consumer remedy is at the consumer's option. The NCDRC Larger Bench order of 13 July 2017 was approved. The reasoning has since travelled into the RERA-CPA interface through Imperia Structures (2020) and IREO Grace Realtech (2021), with HC divergence emerging in 2024-26.
On 2 November 2020 a two-judge bench of U.U. Lalit and Vineet Saran, JJ. — the judgment authored by Lalit J. — held that Section 79 of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, which bars the civil-court jurisdiction over matters within the RERA Authority's remit, does not oust the jurisdiction of the consumer fora under the Consumer Protection Act 1986. The NCDRC and consumer fora are not 'civil courts' within the meaning of the Code of Civil Procedure; the Section 71(1) proviso, Section 88 and the 'without prejudice' framing of Section 18 of RERA preserve the consumer remedy alongside the RERA architecture. The choice of forum vests in the allottee, and the entitlement to maintain an action runs from the builder-buyer agreement date and not from the RERA registration date.
On 11 January 2021 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justices Indu Malhotra and Indira Banerjee — held that one-sided clauses in an apartment buyer's agreement, heavily favouring the developer through asymmetric cancellation, token delay compensation and restricted refund rights, constitute 'unfair trade practice' within Section 2(1)(r) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. The allottee is not bound by such clauses; the developer cannot enforce one-sided forfeiture; the consumer forum has jurisdiction to refuse enforcement; and where the developer fails to deliver possession, the allottee is entitled to refund with interest. The judgment formalises the 'one-sided clause' doctrine first articulated in Wing Cdr Arifur Rahman Khan v. DLF Southern Homes (August 2020) and aligns with Emaar MGF v. Aftab Singh (2018) on the preservation of statutory remedies against private contractual ouster.
On 4 February 2026 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justices Sanjay Kumar and K. Vinod Chandran — set aside the NCDRC's order of 23 August 2023 holding that a consumer complaint was maintainable despite prior RERA proceedings. The Court held that where two concurrent fora are available for the same cause of action, the homebuyer must elect one; having elected RERA, the homebuyer cannot retract to a parallel consumer-forum remedy on the same grievance. The decision narrows the concurrent-jurisdiction rule of Imperia Structures (2020) by overlaying election-of-remedies discipline — concurrent jurisdiction is preserved as a menu choice, not a buffet allowing migration mid-litigation. Concurrent jurisdiction at the outset is preserved; what is foreclosed is successive recourse to a second forum after election.