Consumer panel cracks whip on WR, UB group

MUMBAI: A three-member bench of the state consumer commission on Thursday directed the Western Railway and United Breweries (UB) to jointly undo the damage that may have been caused by three misleading adverstisements.
The commission directed both the parties to put up corrective advertisements within a month at their own cost on three Western Railway trains for a week.Trains with ads proclaiming,"India's No 1 and World���s No 3 Bagpiper Soda" will now have to replace them with the slogan,"Keep liquor away from the young generation, India���s No 1-Only Natural Fruit Drink".
The new slogan was penned by Mumbai Grahak Panchayat, a consumer rights group.
The group, through its member Shirish Deshpande, had taken the Western Railway and United Breweries to the consumer courts against what it called blatant violation of advertisement norms and railway rules on commercial advertisements that prevented direct or surrogate liquor ads.
The Bagpiper Soda adverstisement was selling Bagpiper Whisky in disguise, the commission said in its order.
There were two other advertisements that the...
... consumer activists and the commission frowned upon. Of them, one had the slogan,"Ab cold drink out".
The commission said these ads were clearly an"attempt to induce the young generation to switch over from cold drinks to beer and is highly objectionable, deplorable and also patently illegal".
The bench, comprising president justice B B Vagyani and two members S G Nagarale and A M Karadkhedkar, ruled "there is no Bagpiper Soda in the market".
It said the Western Railway should now prominently display the ad with the slogan,"Nimbu paani, nariyal pani, yehi hai