About the Competition

The Chair on Consumer Law and Practice, NLSIU is organising the 3rd National Essay Competition 2025 to commemorate the celebration of National Consumer Day (24th December). The Essay Competition endeavours to stimulate interest and foster growth amongst students to explore and engage with contemporary and seminal issues in the field of consumer law and policy.

Themes

• Sustainable Consumption
• Cross-Border Consumer Protection in Digital Trade
• Consumer Protection and Artificial Intelligence
• Children as Consumers in the Digital Age
• Consumer Rights in the Gig Economy
• Consumer Awareness and Education
• Consumer Protection in Healthcare and Pharma
• Digital Payments and Consumer Security

The above themes are only indicative, and the participants are free to choose any other topic under the broad theme of consumer protection.

Eligibility

The Competition is open to all – including students, academics, professionals, government officials, members of consumer fora, Voluntary Consumer Organizations (VCOs)/ NGOs, etc.

Submission Guidelines

1. The essay must be written in English and submitted in Microsoft Word document format (.doc/.docx).
2. Co-authorship up to a maximum of one author is permitted.
3. Only one submission is allowed per author/team. Submissions, both as a co-author and a single, will be treated as multiple submissions and will be disqualified as an entry to the competition.
4. The following formatting specifications need to be strictly adhered to:

• Main Body: Font – Times New Roman, Font Size – 12, and Line Spacing – 1.5.
• Footnotes: Font – Times New Roman, Font Size – 10, and Line Spacing – 1.0.
• Margins should be 1 inch or 2.54 cm on all sides.

5. The word limit is 3000-3500 words excluding footnotes. Footnotes must follow the Bluebook system of citation (Harvard, 20th edition).
6. The essay must contain an abstract, not exceeding 250 words (which would not be counted in the word limit for the essay). It must indicate the theme/topic.
7. The Chair reserves the right to summarily reject or return the submission to the author/authors without feedback for non-compliance with these guidelines. In case of any dispute, the decision of the Chair shall be final and binding.
8. The opinions/thoughts/ideas or any view of the author expressed and published in the essay are the respective views of the authors. The Chair shall not be held responsible or accountable for the opinion expressed by the author in the essay.
9. The Chair reserves the right to cancel the competition without notice, in case suitable/quality entries are not received in the competition or in case of any other event outside our reasonable control.

How to Submit?

• All submissions should be made through the Google Form by October 31, 2025, 11:59 pm.
• Incomplete or plagiarized submissions shall be summarily rejected.

Prizes

• First Rank: Rs. 7000 & Certificate of Merit
• Second Rank: Rs. 5000 & Certificate of Merit
• Third Rank: Rs. 3000 & Certificate of Merit

The best entries may be considered for publication in the next issues of the Newsletter of the Chair on Consumer Law.

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2025
Announcement of Results: December 24, 2025

Contact Information: For enquiries, please email us at consumerlaw@nls.ac.in

Vol.13, 2025

SCOPUS|UGC-CARE

No Submission or Processing or Publication Charges

1. ABOUT INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON CONSUMER LAW AND PRACTICE (IJCLP)

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) is an institution of legal education focusing on undergraduate and graduate legal and policy education in India. The University’s Chancellor is the Chief Justice of India, and the Chairman of the Bar Council of India is the Chairman of the General Council. NLSIU, since 2018 has consistently maintained the top rank in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranks higher educational institutions across India.

In Indian history first time the Consumer Law and Practice Chair (CLAP Chair) has been established in August 2008, at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore (NLSIU) by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi, to promote research, teaching and training in Consumer Law and Practice. From the date of establishment of this CLP chair, Prof.(Dr.) Ashok Patil is heading and administering this Chair and is the Chief Editor of this Journal.

The International Journal on Consumer Law and Practice (IJCLP) (ISSN 2347-2731) is an Open-Access, Blind-Peer-reviewed, Law journal published annually by NLSIU under the aegis of the Chair on Consumer Law and Practice, NLSIU (CLAP) since 2013. Recently Journal indexed on SCOPUS, HeinOnline, SCC OnLine, & UGC CARE List.

Previous issues have featured contributions by Hon. Justice AK Sikri (Judge, Supreme Court of India), HC Mult Norbert Reich (Emeritus Professor, Bremen University, Germany), Cristina Poncibò (Assoc. Prof., Comparative Private Law, University of Turin, Italy), Laura Zoboli (Asst. Prof., European Economic Law, University of Warsaw, Poland), James P Nehf (Prof. and Cleon H Foust Fellow, Robert H McKinney School of Law Indiana University), Gail Pearson (Prof., University of Sydney, Australia), etc.

2. TIMELINE FOR SUBMISSION

The submissions for the journal are accepted on a rolling basis round the year. However, the last date for submission of the paper for Vol. XIII, 2025, is 31st March 2025.

3. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The journal welcomes contributions from academicians, practitioners, students of law and allied fields.

Themes:

1. • Empowering Consumers through clean energy transitions;
   • Protect Consumers in Food crisis now and in future;
   • Consumer Journeys in Digital Finance with Mobile Money;
   • Consumer voices in the G20;
   • Consumer Protection Combating Greenwashing;
   • Electronic Enforcement of Consumer Law;
   • Durability and right to repair: A Consumer Right
   • Digital Future: Building trusted E-Commerce & Generative AI

The themes listed above are merely indicative and not exhaustive. The Journal highly appreciates submissions on any contemporary issues in the field of Consumer Protection and its legal interactions.

Word limit:

1. • • Articles including abstract (6,000-8,000 words inclusive of footnotes).
     • Case Comment, Legislative Briefs (2,500-3,000 words inclusive of footnotes).
     • Book Review (2,000 words inclusive of footnotes).

Note: The authors intending for Book Review shall submit a hard or soft copy of the book along with the consent letter from the Publisher or Author of the Book at the address of the Journal.

1. • FORMAT OF SUBMISSION:

Please refer the guidelines for further information.

1. • HOW TO SUBMIT?

Only electronic submissions are accepted. Kindly submit your submission on this Submission Form along with the covering letter, and resume on or before 31st March 2025 for it to be considered for volume XI. Please feel free to contact us at ijclp@nls.ac.in for any queries.

 

About the Essay Competition

The CLAP at NLSIU, Bengaluru proposes to organise an Essay Competition to commemorate the celebration of National Consumer Day, 2023 (24th December). The Essay Competition endeavours to stimulate interest and foster growth amongst students to explore and engage with contemporary and seminal issues in the field of consumer law and policy.

To ensure wider reach and opportunity, the Essay Competition will be open to all – including students, academics, professionals, government officials, members of consumer fora, Voluntary Consumer Organisations (VCOs)/ NGOs etc.

Themes

· E-commerce & Consumer Protection

· Product Safety

· Data Protection / Privacy

· Use of ADR/ ODR for Redressal of Consumer disputes

· Legal Metrology Law & Consumer Protection

· Food Safety & Standards Law & Consumer Protection

· Dark Patterns

· Misleading Advertisements and Consumer Protection

The above themes are only indicative and the participants are free to choose any other topic under the broad theme of consumer protection.

Eligibility

To ensure wider reach and opportunity, the Competition will be open to all – including students, academics, professionals, government officials, members of consumer fora, Voluntary Consumer Organizations (VCOs)/ NGOs etc.

Submission Guidelines

1. The essay must be written in English and submitted in Microsoft Word document format (.doc/.docx).

2. Co-authorship up to a maximum of one author is permitted.

3. Only one submission is allowed per author/team. Submissions, both as co-author and single, will be treated as multiple submissions and will be disqualified as an entry to the competition.

4. The following formatting specifications need to be strictly adhered to: Main Body: Font – Times New Roman, Font Size – 12, and Line Spacing – 1.5; Footnotes: Font – Times New Roman, Font Size – 10, and Line Spacing – 1.0; Margins should be 1 inch or 2.54 cm on all sides.

5. The word limit is 3000-3500 words excluding footnotes. Footnotes must follow the Bluebook system of citation (Harvard, 20th edition).

6. The essay must contain an abstract, not exceeding 250 words (which would not be counted in the word limit for the essay). It must indicate the theme/topic.

7. The Board reserves the right to summarily reject or return the submission to the author/authors without feedback for non-compliance with these guidelines. In case of any dispute, the decision of the Board shall be final and binding.

8. The opinion/thoughts/ideas or any view of the author expressed and published on the essay are respective views of the authors. The Chair or the Board shall not be held responsible or accountable for the opinion expressed by the author on the essay.

9. The Chair reserves the right to cancel the competition without notice, in case suitable/quality entries are not received in the competition or in case of any other event outside our reasonable control.

How to Submit?

· All submissions should be made through a Google Form by February 5, 2024, 23:59 hours.

· Incomplete or plagiarized submissions shall be summarily rejected. The similarity limit is 15% (excluding footnotes).

Prizes & Certificates of Merit

First Rank: Rs. 4000 & Certificate of Merit

Second Rank: Rs. 3000 & Certificate of Merit

Third Rank: Rs. 2000 & Certificate of Merit

The best entries may be considered for publication in the next issues of the Newsletter of the Chair on Consumer Law.

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: February 5, 2024

Announcement of Results: March 15, 2024 (World Consumer Rights Day)

Contact Information

For inquiries, please email us at consumerlaw@nls.ac.in.

Project to Explore Digital Transformation of India’s Consumer Grievance Redressal System through GenAI

The National Law School of India University is excited to announce a new research project on consumer law with the support of Meta. This project will assess how large language models (LLM) can be used for building public solutions for enhancing efficiency in India’s consumer grievance redressal system. The project will be executed along with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), in collaboration with the Department Of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) as the knowledge partner.

The research initiative will explore the feasibility of leveraging Llama 2, Meta’s openly available large language model, in creating and evaluating a proof of concept of a citizen centric chatbot and a decision-assist tool in the area of consumer law. With the goal of enhancing efficiency, the chatbot will be designed to guide consumers on the procedural aspects of drafting a complaint and answering questions relating to consumer law in India. The decision assist tool in this research also will be designed to support searching case laws and summarisation of documents to provide assistance to judicial authorities in the area of consumer affairs. The research project will explore how LLMs can assist consumers or judicial authorities in the context of ongoing oversight and control by human decision makers. In keeping with the commitment to responsible innovation, NLSIU and IIT Bombay will also release a white paper explaining the risk mitigation approaches implemented and how responsible design principles have been deployed at every layer of stack.

At the launch of the project, Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor of National Law School of India University said, “The National Law School of India University is committed to academic research and legal innovation using Artificial Intelligence to aid legal system reform. This project on consumer law aims to enhance awareness on consumer rights, and to provide accessible  assistance by leveraging Llama2. With our expertise in interdisciplinary research, NLSIU is uniquely positioned to help pioneer these legal applications employing large language models. We will create a rich corpus of Indian legal resources to map the landscape of consumer disputes in the country, and use this corpus to train the Llama model. We will work to ensure that the material fed into the model is relevant, reliable, and user-friendly. Additionally, we will develop a prototype of a decision-assist tool to support efficient consumer dispute resolution. We look forward to working with Meta, IIT Bombay and the Dept. of Consumer Affairs on this exciting initiative that marks a significant step towards transformative legal reforms in India.”

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, said, “The government is committed to creating a safe environment for consumers. The launch of the research project is a step forward in our efforts to evaluate innovation solutions using generative AI for enhancing consumer rights and awareness, underpinning our efforts on consumer protection in India. The initiative pioneered by the Department of Consumer Affairs along with NLSIU and IIT Bombay is supported by Meta, and is a significant step towards using open innovation for building applications for the benefit of consumers.”

Joel Kaplan, Vice President, Global Policy, Meta, added, “Meta has put exploratory research, open science, and collaboration with academic and industry partners at the heart of our AI efforts for over a decade. We’ve seen first-hand how open innovation can lead to technologies that benefit more people and transform sectors. We’re excited to extend our support to NLSIU for its  research initiatives building AI tools leveraging Llama 2. As more researchers, developers and startups build and experiment on our technology, the more we can learn about use cases, safe model deployment, and potential opportunities.”

Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Professor IIT Bombay and well known Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning Expert, added “LLMs, of which Meta’s Llama 2 is a shining example, is the most exciting development in AI today with immense potential for social benefit. The trinity of domain-task-language, e.g., Law-Chabot-English or Agriculture-Sentiment-Marathi, is set to be tackled in an unprecedented way through LLMs. With our long and deep expertise in NLP, ML and LLM we are excited to work with Meta, NLSIU and DoCA on the very impactful problem of question answering and search in consumer law domain.”

About Meta

Meta is an industry leader in GenAI research and is partnering to  build a robust AI ecosystem in India. Meta believes in an open approach for building AI models, and works in collaboration with others in industry, government, civil society and academia to advance them in a responsible way.

Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.

​​About IIT Bombay

IIT Bombay (IITB) is an internationally renowned educational institute of India with stellar track record and leadership in teaching and research. It was set up in 1958 with an act of parliament and has been declared as an Institute of Eminence. IITB alumni have been industry leaders, acclaimed academicians, successful entrepreneurs, and eminent public figures. IITB is the most sought after institute for students. For decades, the institute’s cutting edge research has pushed the frontiers of knowledge and brought immense benefits to society.

View the official press release by Meta here.

After our first National Webinar in the month of June, 2023, the Chair on Consumer Law and Practice is organising a follow-up National Webinar for the officials of Ministry of Consumer Affairs of various State and UTs to come together to encourage experience sharing, develop through discussions effective recommendations to strengthen India’s direct selling industry for better implementation, and adhere to the Central Government’s viewpoint of setting up a Monitoring Mechanism for the States/UTs to watch over or supervise the activities of direct sellers and direct selling entities.