The Regulatory Imperative: Addressing Algorithmic Opacity under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019

The rapid growth of algorithmic systems across digital consumer markets has fundamentally transformed how products, services, and prices are delivered. Algorithms now determine creditworthiness, recommend goods, personalize prices, and even influence consumer choices often operating behind a veil of opacity. While these systems enhance efficiency and personalization, they also generate new forms of consumer vulnerability, rooted in what scholars describe as algorithmic opacity. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 (CPA 2019), though a landmark legislative reform aimed at modernizing consumer rights, remains conceptually tied to traditional human-led decision-making and is largely silent on algorithmic governance. This paper adopts a doctrinal and analytical approach to examine how the CPA 2019 currently addresses, and fails to address, harms arising from opaque algorithmic decision-making. Through statutory interpretation and legal reasoning, it identifies key limitations in the Act’s existing framework, including definitional ambiguities, procedural inadequacies, and institutional gaps. The paper concludes with doctrinal recommendations for integrating algorithmic transparency, fairness, and accountability within India’s consumer protection jurisprudence, ensuring that the law evolves in step with the digital marketplace.