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The
recent
issuance of alert circular at the Mumbai airport dated January
6, 2012 on behalf of
India to curb parallel importers, has
created a big chaos in the Delhi's IT market. Opposing the
Dell's
action and calling it unfair trade practice for misleading
Indian
consumers by misusing intellectual property rights (imported
goods)
enforcement rules, 2007, Delhi based All India Computer Traders
Association (ADCTA) held a meeting on February 22, 2012 with
Satyenda
Mathuria, joint commissioner of custom ( I&G), SN Ojha,
deputy
commissioner of custom, SP Balmiki, appraiser custom, who also
filed
a compliant to deputy commissioner of custom, intellectual
property
right cell against Dell India.
Four
members
of ADCTA apprised to the officers of custom department
present in the meeting about the cheating with Indian consumers
by
Dell India with the misuse of Intellectual Property Rights
(imported
goods) Enforcement Rules, 2007, and Illegal Alert Circular
issued by
SIIB (IPR Cell), ACC, Mumbai. The unfair trade practice by Dell
India
(Cartelization, against the customer's interest) and custom
department action are against the consumer benefit, and
mechanism to
control the prices.
This
entire
episode came to the notice when office of the commissioner of
custom, Mumbai issued an alert circular (No
LRM/TARGET-55/2008-09)
with directions that all the consignments found to contain Dell
laptops or portable computers shipments, under import by
parallel
importers are subject to be suspended/hold for Dell's clearance.
Speaking
to
The DQ Week, Swarn Singh, joint secretary, ADCTA said,
“During the meet, the produced documents by the association were
up
to the satisfaction of the custom officers. Thereafter Mathuria,
joint commissioner of custom, assured that all shipments which
are
put on hold on account of alleged Infringement of Rights of Dell
India, will be released immediately without further delay. It
was
assured by custom officers that they will not let Dell India
allow
unfair trade practice on account of cartelization, which is
illegal.”
Secondly,
the
association members are also irked with the increased pricing of
laptops by 7%. Dell is charging much higher prices from
customers in
India than price available in open international market.
Singh
pointed
out that, “The company increased the prices with the reason
that USD becomes stronger and hard disk price is increased in
international market. Whereas the ground realities were entirely
different as USD became soft and hard disk drive prices reduced
sharply in the internal market.”
The
association
called the entire episode as preplanned by Dell, so that
they can sell thier laptops to Indian customers at very high
price
because of their monopoly which was managed by Dell after
restricting
the import consignments of other importers by misusing
Intellectual
Property Rights (Imported Goods) Enforcement Rules, 2007.