Sell at MRP or pay fine, says court

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Related Articles

Tata Steel completes $546-mn exchange offer for CA...Dell Q3 profit dips 54 per centRIL shareholders approve 1:1 bonus issue

New Delhi, Nov 27 : Coming down heavily on the traders selling goods over the maximum retail price(MRP), the state consumer court has said they will be liable to pay "heavy punitive damages" if they indulge in such practices.

The word ‘MRP’ printed on the packaged goods shows that no hotel, restaurant, cinema etc has any right to charge more than what is printed thereon, Delhi state consumer disputes redressal commission said.

Rejecting an appeal filed by fast-food chain ‘Nirula’s’, Commission president JD Kapoor said, "If any complaint of this nature is received in future, the culprit shall be visited with heavy punitive damages running into lakhs which may drive them out from selling such articles or goods."

The court said "no kind of explanation including the one that sale of such articles is not the core activity but is incidental to the overall services rendered is permissible or acceptable."

Even an illiterate and gullible person knows the meaning of the word ‘MRP’, the court said, adding that it was the statutory obligation on the part of the traders to sell goods within their retail price.

It said that any sale of a particular quantity of an article by opening the package or by any other process at a higher rate than the MRP amounts to "deficiency of service".

Ankit Jain, third-year law student at Delhi university, had approached the district consumer forum after Nirula’s outlet in Mayur Vihar charged him Rs 35 for a Rs 15 Coke bottle

The forum ruled in favour of Jain and ordered Nirula’s to pay Rs 5,000 as compensation and Rs 2,000 as litigation costs to him. Subsequently, Nirula’s filed an appeal against the forum’s order.

"The question of MRP squarely falls within the ambit and scope of ‘deficiency’ and ‘unfair trade practice’," the state Commission said, dismissing the appeal as "highly misconceived and misdirected".

The court ordered Nirula’s to pay exemplary punitive damages of Rs 25,000 in favour of the state consumer welfare fund. It however set aside the Rs 5,000 compensation awarded to Ankit.