Tour and travel firm, Cox & Kings Ltd (CKL) and SriLankan Airlines (SLA), have been asked by the apex consumer commission to pay Rs 2 lakh to a couple for issuing them ‘OK’ status air tickets, which turned out to be unconfirmed.
The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) also asked CKL to pay Rs 19,000 as reimbursement of extra expenses incurred by Delhi residents, Prashant Aggarwal and his wife Jyoti Bansal, for extending their stay and as cost of litigation.
The NCDRC direction came on travel firm CKL’s petition against the Delhi State Consumer Commission’s verdict, which had upheld a district consumer forum’s order holding CKL and the airline guilty of rendering deficient services and asking them to pay Rs 1 lakh each to the couple.
The NCDRC gave its order relying on the photocopies of the tickets issued to the couple by CKL and said in the face of the documentary evidence, it “is not possible to accept” the argument of the travel company. There were no faults in the orders passed by the fora below, it added.
Travel company CKL had argued that though the air tickets issued to the couple showed ‘OK’ status, they were actually waitlisted.
“In the face of this clear documentary evidence, it is simply not possible to accept the long-winded explanation of CKL that though the tickets showed ‘OK’ status, they were actually not so...”
“In such a situation, it has to be held that the district forum’s finding of deficiency in service on the part of the opposite parties as affirmed by the State Commission cannot be faulted,” said an NCDRC bench of its members Anupam Dasgupta and Suresh Chandra.