Question

As per the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, what are one-sided agreements?

• A. Unfair trade practices
• B. Unilateral contracts
• C. Unconscionable
• D. Quasi contracts

Hint:

Consumer Protection Act, 2019 = Tougher on "One-Sidedness." If a contract puts the consumer at a massive, unfair disadvantage, the law calls it an "Unfair Trade Practice"!

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

The 2019 overhaul of India's consumer law was written with modern contracting practices in mind, things like clickwrap terms, subscription services and e-commerce checkouts where a consumer has no real chance to negotiate and simply accepts whatever terms a business drafts. Lawmakers noticed that businesses were increasingly using standard-form contracts loaded with clauses that protected only the seller, letting them cancel at will, disclaim almost all liability, or impose penalties that a consumer could never realistically avoid.

Rather than creating a brand new head of liability for this, the amendment folded it into an existing and already broad concept, unfair trade practice, and expanded its definition under Section 2(47) to specifically capture contracts that are one-sided and cause significant harm to the weaker party. This was a deliberate legislative choice, because unfair trade practice already carried enforcement machinery and remedies under the Act, so extending its definition was more effective than inventing a separate doctrine.

Other legal labels floating around simply do not fit this purpose. A unilateral contract is about how an agreement is formed, not about whether its terms are fair. Something being unconscionable is a general fairness idea from ordinary contract law, not a term the consumer statute itself adopts. And a quasi contract deals with situations where there was never a real agreement at all, which is the opposite of what is happening here, since a one-sided agreement is a real contract with unfair terms.

Reading the amendment in light of what problem it was designed to solve points clearly to one category.
\[ \boxed{\text{Unfair trade practices}} \]

Answer 2

Instead of starting from general legal definitions, this approach reads Section 2(47) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 directly and checks whether the statutory text itself supports each of the four labels offered as an answer.

1. Option (A) - Unfair trade practices: The text of Section 2(47) expressly lists one-sided contractual terms causing significant detriment to a consumer as an illustration of unfair trade practice. The statute itself uses this exact category, so the text directly supports this option.
2. Option (B) - Unilateral contracts: Searching the statutory language for this phrase turns up nothing; the Act's definition of unfair trade practice does not use or rely on the term unilateral contract anywhere, so there is no textual support for this option.
3. Option (C) - Unconscionable: While courts sometimes describe one-sided terms informally as unconscionable, this word is not the operative label used in Section 2(47) itself. The statute chooses to house this concept within unfair trade practice, not under a separate unconscionability heading, so the text does not support this option as the Act's own classification.
4. Option (D) - Quasi contracts: The statutory provisions on unfair trade practice and one-sided terms sit within the definitions concerning real, existing consumer contracts and trade conduct, entirely separate from the law of obligations that arise without a contract. There is no textual link between quasi contract and the one-sided-terms provision, so this option finds no support.

A direct textual reading of the provision confirms that the statute itself places one-sided agreements within unfair trade practice, and nowhere else.

Therefore, the correct answer is Unfair trade practices.