Excelsior Correspondent
UDHAMPUR, Apr 12: A team of Legal Metrology Department today raided various booksellers and fined those indulged in over charging.
The raids were conducted on the direction of Deputy Commissioner Udhampur, who had constituted a team of Legal Metrology to check the over-pricing of school books by certain sellers.
The raids were conducted at Rattan Stationery, National Book Depot , Gupta Stationery Mart and other stationery shops.
The LMD team was comprising Deep Singh, Anil Sharma (District Pollution Control Officer) , Arti Bardwaj (Assistant Labour Commissioner) ,Jai Dev Singh Sambaya (Assistant Controller of LMD and others.
During raid, the Legal Metrology team found that customers were not given any bill for the purchases made by them. It was also found that small chits were pasted on books with exorbitant prices of books than what was their MRP.
The team was also planning to inspect school uniform sale shops but owner of these shops closed their establishment before the raiding members could reach on the sport.
The district administration had received specific complaints that certain private schools were not directly selling the books and notebooks to avoid action of the authorities and thus they have outsourced the job to certain sellers in lieu of some commission.
These schools included Common Public School, Happy Model Hr Sec School, Vivek Niketan, Maharaja Hari Singh School etc, which were allegedly forcing the parents of students for purchasing the books and notebook from selected shops, said an official spokesman of the department.
According to DC Udhampur, Ravinder Kumar, the administration will take strict action against the schools, which were forcing the students to purchase from the selected shops.