New Delhi: The Apex Court today dismissed Centre’s plea seeking reconsideration of Court’s order allowing hotels and restaurants charge extra MRP for packaged drinking water bottles.
The bench headed by Justices Rohinton F Nariman and Navin Sinha deciding on the case found no merit in the plea and said the Central Government failed to make any ground seeking modification of the Court’s previous Judgement in December.
The Court said, “Having carefully gone through the review petitions, the order under challenge and the papers annexed therewith, we are satisfied that there is no error apparent on the face of the record, warranting reconsideration of the order impugned. The review petitions are, accordingly, dismissed.”
Now Centre is planning to urge the Apex Court to review its order says Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan or the only legal remedy after a rejected petition is to file a curative petition against the order which is usually dismissed.
The Bench in its December judgment cited the lacuna in the legal regime, which does not bound Hotels and Restaurants to adhere to the laws of selling packaged drinking bottle at the exact MRP.
While allowing the petition of Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) the Court highlighted the laws as “composite indivisible agreements for supply of services and food and drinks would not come within the purview of the Legal Metrology Act”.
Neither the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1976 read with the enactment of 1985, nor the Legal Metrology Act, 2009, would apply so as to interdict the sale of mineral water in hotels and restaurants at prices which are above the MRP,” News18 reported.