J-K LMD sends notice to Pawan Hans over complaint from

A Jammu and Kashmir government department has said it has served a notice to Messrs Pawan Hans Limited after receiving a complaint of "deficiency in services and adopting unfair trade practices" against the helicopter service provider.
A complaint was received against the helicopter service provider claiming that a family of four were left stranded at the airport on September 29 despite getting boarding passes on the day of travel, Deputy Controller of Legal Metrology Department (LMD), consumer protection, Manoj Prabhakar told PTI.
The Department of Legal Metrology is a consumer organisation involved in regulating market by conducting extensive market-checking to prevent unfair trade practices.

The helicopter service between Jammu and Poonch, and, Jammu and Rajouri districts started last month.
He has said taking cognisance of the complaint, the department has established a case against the service provider and would move to the consumer court soon.
"The complainant paid the fare for their travel from Jammu to Rajouri one day in advance and after a few hours of wait they were provided boarding passes on the day of travel.

"However, they were left in between and other people who came later were boarded on the chopper leaving the complainant along with family members stranded at the airport without any justification from the management," he has said.

Prabhakar said that since the aggrieved commuters could not reach their destination and also their money was not refunded, they filed a complaint to the department for deficiency in services by the service provider.
He said inspection of records revealed that boarding passes were issued to the persons but they were denied service at the last minute.
The department has served a notice to the Pawan Hans management on October 1, but no reply was received from their side except telephonic message for granting time to reply, Prabhakar said, adding a final notice has been issued on Friday.
Asked to comment on the issue, a Pawan Hans official today told PTI, "The state government hired our chopper. They decide on air fare and issue tickets to passengers and we do not deal with passengers, we only deal with the state government."

Prabhakar said the government being the custodian of consumer rights under the Consumer Protection Act, the LMD department has taken the records related to travel of the commuters and issued final notice to the service provider on Friday for deficiency in service, adopting unfair trade practices and making the commuters suffer despite being charged the fare.