Madhu Agrawal
It refers to Union Minister for Consumer Affairs warning of fine and jail-term for those selling bottled water and cold drinks at more than Maximum-Retail-Price (MRP). The minister rightly observed that at many places including airports and multiplexes, packaged drinking water selling at 10-20% higher than MRP with cases found where some of these bottles have been found to carry no mention of any MRP. Section 36 of Legal Metrology Act clearly says anyone caught selling, distributing or delivering any pre-packaged commodity that does not conform to declarations on the package shall be punished with fine up to Rs 25,000 for the first offence, Rs 50,000 for second offence and subsequent offences attracting a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh or imprisonment for one year or both. But main problem is lack of awareness about the law, and mode of making complaints against the violators.
Many marketing/manufacturing companies quite comfortably violate Legal Metrology Act by packing the same product including bottled water and cold drinks in packs with MRP printed much over normal MRP by writing ‘specially packed for ….’ on the product-label. Legal Metrology Act must be amended to prevent such malpractice. Unfortunately India’s corporate is even much clever for minting money against consumers’ interests. Manufacturing/marketing companies may start selling same product under some other brand-name for places like airports/multiplexes etc. Department of Consumer Affairs should take every corrective step keeping in mind any such possible strategies might be adopted in future.
It is surprising that even most common item like bottled water has such varying prices from say rupees twenty to rupees forty litres, meaning thereby possibility of very huge margins on essential commodity of water. If quality or purity is yardstick of such heavy price-difference, then it is not proper to allow ‘poor’ quality drinking water being marketed at lower price. Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs should have some regulatory price-mechanism for packaged drinking water.
