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Hotels and restaurants can keep on selling bottled mineral water bottles above 'MRP' rates as the Supreme Court observed that the same has not been prohibited under law. A bench of Justice RF Nariman and Justice Navin Sinha stated that neither the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1976, r/w the Standards of Weights and Measures (Enforcement) Act, 1985, or the Legal Metrology Act, 2009, would apply in order to prohibit the sale of mineral water in lodgings and eateries at costs which are over the MRP.
The Supreme Court upheld a Delhi High Court single seat judgment which had held that charging costs for mineral water over the MRP imprinted on the bottle amid the service of customers in hotels and restaurants does not abuse any of the sections of the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, as this does not constitute a deal or exchange of these products by the hotelier or restaurateur to its customers. The single bench, permitting the writ request filed by the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India, had stated: "The client does not enter a lodging or an eatery to make a straightforward buy of these commodities. It might be that a customer would not enter only to buy a water bottle, however his immediate reason in doing as such would obviously be to enjoy the ambience and the environment and as a result might buy any article for utilization. Can there be any legitimate purpose behind the Court or Commission to forbid the offer of packaged mineral water other than at a specific cost, and overlook the generally extreme charge for some tea or espresso. The reaction to this expository question can't yet be in the negative."
The Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India had moved toward the Supreme Court against the division seat arrange which had discarded the letter patent interests by neither putting aside nor asserting the judgment of the Single Judge. The division bench held that the single bench judgment would not come in the method for any all over again continuing under the Legal Metrology Act, 2009, which has since supplanted the two Acts of 1976 and 1985, regardless of whether the concerned arrangements of the old and the new law are indistinguishable/comparative. Alluding to different arrangements of both new and the old Act, the apex court observed that regardless of the constitutional alteration having been passed, the meaning of "sale" in the new Act still says that composite indivisible agreement for supply of services and food and beverages would not come within the purview of the Act. "On a reading of the said Act and the Rules made thereunder, plainly the position qua "sale" remains precisely the same as that contained in the 1976 Act, which now stands canceled. This being the case, we are of the view that the learned Single Judge was completely right in his decision that regardless of the change having been passed, the meaning of "sale" contained both in the 1976 Act and now in the 2009 Act would demonstrate that composite indivisible agreement for supply of services and food and beverages would not come surprisingly close to either enactment.
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