NCDRC dismisses appeal filed by Cloudtail challenging CCPA's order

CCPA had asked the company to recall 1,033 cookers in violation of BIS standards; had levied penalty of Rs 1 lakh on the company

The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) on Wednesday dismissed an appeal from Cloudtail India Pvt Ltd, challenging an order passed by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA). The order concerned a violation of consumer rights involving the sale of domestic pressure cookers without adherence to mandatory BIS standards.

In an order dated November 2022, the CCPA had instructed the company to recall 1,033 units of domestic pressure cookers that it had sold to consumers. The authority further directed Cloudtail to reimburse the costs of the recalled pressure cookers and submit a compliance report within 45 days. Moreover, the CCPA had imposed a penalty of Rs 1,00,000 on the company for the sale of pressure cookers in contravention of Quality Control Orders (QCO).

Cloudtail India had been marketing the pressure cookers primarily on the e-commerce site, Amazon.

According to the QCO, effective from February 1, 2022, domestic pressure cookers must conform to Indian Standard (IS) 2347: 2017 and bear the standard mark under a licence from the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), as stipulated in Scheme-I of Schedule II of the Bureau of Indian Standard (Conformity Assessment) Regulations, 2018.

Domestic pressure cookers, being among the most commonly used everyday items in households, are often located in close proximity to family members. Consequently, a domestic pressure cooker that violates the mandatory requirements of the QCO can pose an extreme and fatal danger to the life and safety of consumers and the public at large.

It was noted that Cloudtail was selling domestic pressure cookers to consumers without conforming to the required mandatory standards and without the standard (ISI) mark under the licence from the BIS, even after the enforcement of the QCO.

In its response to the CCPA, Cloudtail had contended that following the enforcement of the QCO, it had suspended the import of the pressure cookers. However, the CCPA observed that while the import had indeed been suspended, the company had not ceased the sale of these non-compliant pressure cookers to consumers.