Question

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

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

Hint:

Whenever you see the phrase "one-sided agreement" in Consumer Protection law, think of unfair or unconscionable contractual terms.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

Before choosing an option, it helps to fix the meaning of each term used in law, since the four options are all real legal expressions but none of the wrong three actually means a one-sided agreement.

1. Unfair trade practice: a business conduct concept, false claims, misleading ads, deceptive sales tactics. It is about how a product or service is marketed, not about the fairness of a contract's clauses.
2. Quasi contract: a fictional contract created by law where none was actually agreed, used mainly to stop one party from being unjustly enriched at another's cost. It assumes no real agreement exists, which rules it out here since a one-sided agreement is a real, signed agreement.
3. Unilateral contract: describes how the contract comes into existence, through performance of an act rather than an exchange of promises. It has nothing to do with whether the resulting terms favour one side unfairly.
4. Unconscionable contract: the only option that directly addresses fairness of terms, an agreement so heavily loaded in favour of one party (usually imposing unreasonable obligations like steep penalties, one-sided cancellation rights, or excessive deposits) that courts and the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 treat it as an unfair contract.

Since three of the four terms describe something other than the fairness of a contract's terms, and only the fourth term is defined by that unfairness, unconscionable contracts is the only label that logically matches one-sided agreements.

The correct answer is unconscionable contracts.

Answer 2

The most likely source of confusion in this question is between unfair trade practice and unconscionable contract, since both use the word unfair. Separating these two, and then quickly disposing of the remaining two options, gives the answer.

1. Unfair trade practices vs. unconscionable contracts: an unfair trade practice concerns how a product or service is sold or advertised (false claims, misrepresentation, deceptive schemes), while an unconscionable contract concerns what the contract itself says, terms that place an unreasonable burden on the weaker party. A one-sided agreement is about the terms, not the sales pitch.
2. Quasi contracts: these arise only where there was no real contract between the parties in the first place, the law simply steps in to prevent one side from gaining an unfair advantage without paying for it. Because a one-sided agreement is, by definition, an actual agreement entered into (just on unfair terms), it cannot be a quasi contract.
3. Unilateral contracts: this label is about the mechanics of acceptance, a completely separate axis from whether the agreement's terms are fair. A unilateral contract can be perfectly fair, and a bilateral contract can be heavily one-sided, so this term is unrelated to the question.
4. Unconscionable contracts: once the sales-conduct option, the no-agreement option, and the acceptance-mechanism option are all set aside, this is the only remaining option, and it independently matches the description of an agreement with terms weighted unreasonably in favour of one party.

By first separating the two unfair-sounding options on the basis of conduct versus terms, and then ruling out the two options that do not even involve a real, existing agreement or that address only how acceptance occurs, the field narrows to a single option.

So the correct answer is unconscionable contracts.