IKEA charges for bag with its logo on it; Consumer Court orders compensation to consumer
Bengaluru (PTI): A Consumer Commission here has ordered Swedish furniture retailer IKEA to refund a consumer, and also pay Rs 3,000 as compensation for charging her for a paper bag to carry the goods she had purchased.
IKEA India Private Limited was ordered to pay the consumer a sum of Rs 20 with interest, and also Rs 1,000 towards damages and Rs 2,000 towards litigation expenses.
The carry bag, which was charged Rs 20 by IKEA had its logo printed on it, which the Commission said "amounts to unfair trade practice by charging for the bag."
The I Additional District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Shanthinagar, Bengaluru, in its order said: "We are shocked to note the kind of service provided by these big malls/showrooms...the Opposite Party committed deficiency in service and unfair trade practice and complainant is bound to be compensated."
The consumer, Sangeetha Bohra, had visited the Nagasandra branch of IKEA here on October 6, 2022 and purchased a few items. She sought a bag to carry the items and was charged Rs 20 for it though it had the logo of the store on it.
She approached the Consumer Commission claiming it was a deficiency of service and unfair trade practice.
IKEA contended that "it does not indulge in any sale of goods that has hidden charges or indulge in concealment of information from its consumers or indulge in any practices that may be considered as a breach of trust or unfair trade practice. The information pertaining to all its products, including the paper bag, is conspicuously displayed on various aisles of its store and is not automatically or suspiciously added to the purchasers at the time of billing."
The Commission headed by President B N Arayanappa and Members Jyothi N and Sharavathi S M in their judgment however dismissed this contention and said, "It has been held by Hon'ble State Commission that all kinds of expenses incurred in order to put goods into deliverable state shall be suffered by the seller. As such, the contention raised does not merit acceptance."
The Commission noted that the consumers were also not allowed to carry their own bags. "If a consumer wants to purchase say about 15 (items) in number from different shops, we cannot expect him/her to take 15 carry bags from home for the same...," the recent judgment said.
IKEA was ordered to comply with the order within 30 days from the date of receipt of the order.
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NDA sweeps bypolls to four assembly segments in Bihar
Patna (PTI): The ruling NDA in Bihar on Saturday swept the bypolls to four assembly segments, retaining Imamganj and wresting from the INDIA bloc Tarari, Ramgarh and Belaganj, receiving a boost ahead of the assembly elections due next year.
Candidates of the Jan Suraaj, floated recently by former political strategist Prashant Kishor with much fanfare, lost deposits in all but one seat, in a clear indication that the fledgling party, despite claims of taking the political landscape in the state by storm, needs to cover much ground.
The biggest setback for the INDIA bloc, helmed by the RJD, came in Belaganj, a seat the party had been winning since its inception in the 1990s, but this time lost to the JD(U) headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the arch-rival of its founding president Lalu Prasad.
The JD(U) candidate Manorama Devi, a former MLC, defeated by a margin of more than 21,000 votes RJD’s Vishwanath Kumar Singh who made his debut from a seat that fell vacant upon election to Lok Sabha of his father Surendra Prasad Yadav, a multiple term MLA.
The margin of victory was greater than the 17,285 votes polled by Mohd Amjad of Jan Suraaj, whom the RJD may have liked to blame for its defeat by causing a split in Muslim votes.
JD(U) national spokesman Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said, "The people of Bihar deserve kudos for rejecting the negativity of the opposition and reposing their trust in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Under his leadership, the NDA will win more than 200 seats of the 243-strong assembly in 2025."
The RJD also suffered an embarrassing defeat in Ramgarh, where Prashant Kishor’s prediction of the party “finishing third or fourth” came true. The forecast had caused Sudhakar Singh, son of state RJD president Jagadanand Singh, the MP from Buxar who had won the assembly seat in 2020, to threaten that Jan Suraaj cadres in the constituency will be “beaten up with sticks”.
Singh’s younger brother Ajit finished a distant third after BJP winner Ashok Kumar Singh, a former MLA, and Satish Kumar Singh Yadav who fought on a ticket of the BSP, which has little foothold in Bihar.
Jan Suraaj, though, was hardly a factor in Ramgarh, where its candidate Sushil Kumar Singh polled less than four per cent votes.
The BJP also pulled off a stunning victory in Tarari, which falls under the Arrah Lok Sabha seat, currently represented by CPI(ML)’s Sudama Prasad, who had won the assembly segment for two consecutive terms.
CPI(ML) candidate Raju Yadav lost, by a margin of a little over 10,000 votes, to BJP debutant Vishal Prashant, better known as the son of local strongman Sunil Pandey, who was formerly with the JD(U) and had joined the saffron party a few months ago.
Jan Suraaj had initially announced that it was fielding a former Vice Chief of the Army in Tarari but later disclosed that he could not contest because of technical reasons. Its candidate Kiran Singh got less than four per cent votes.
The most respectable performance from Jan Suraaj came in the reserved Imamganj seat where its candidate Jitendra Paswan stood third, polling well over 20 per cent votes.
The seat, however, went to Deepa Kumari, daughter-in-law of Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who defeated RJD’s Raushan Kumar by a slender margin of less than 6,000 votes.
Manjhi, who heads the Hindustani Awam Morcha, vacated Imamganj earlier this year upon getting elected to Lok Sabha from Gaya.
With the exception of Ashok Singh in Ramgarh, the winners in all the seats shall be making their debut in the state assembly.
