NRAI may suspend or terminate Navneet Kalra’s membership; says awaiting clarity on case
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Kalra owns the restaurants Khan Chacha, Town Hall and Nege & Ju in the national capital, besides eyewear retailer Dayal Opticals. Police seized 524 oxygen concentrators from the premises of the restaurants – Khan Chacha and Town Hall in Khan Market and Nege & Ju in Lodhi Colony – which were allegedly sold at heavily inflated prices.
The National Restaurant Association of India said it may suspend or terminate the membership of New Delhi-based restaurateur Navneet Kalra, who is alleged to have hoarded oxygen concentrators and sold them in the black market.
Kalra owns the restaurant’s Khan Chacha, Town Hall, and Nege & Ju in the national capital, besides eyewear retailer Dayal Opticals. Police seized 524 oxygen concentrators from the premises of the restaurants – Khan Chacha and Town Hall in Khan Market and Nege & Ju in Lodhi Colony – which were allegedly sold at heavily inflated prices.
“We will terminate the said restaurant’s membership if found culpable of any major criminal act or we will suspend the membership if the charges are for some non-serious offenses,” NRAI president Anurag Katriar said. “There are several contradictory stories about this case right now. We are still awaiting an official statement from the authorities on this subject before deciding on our next course of action.”
Katriar said this situation was unprecedented but if Kalra’s restaurants were found culpable of wrongdoing, the NRAI would not hesitate to initiate the most appropriate and strictest disciplinary action against them.
Delhi Police issued a lookout notice for Kalra on Monday.
According to media reports, the public prosecutor told the Saket court hearing Kalra’s anticipatory bail plea on Tuesday that he had “cheated the government” by failing to disclose the MRP for imports of the oxygen concentrators in “violation of orders passed last year.”
However, the chief metropolitan magistrate asked whether it was an offence to do business in this country and stated that there were no allegations of tax or customs duty evasion for the imported oxygen concentrators.
The court observed that all payments were accounted for and all taxes were paid. If the tax was paid, the tax department would have all the information and nothing was concealed, the court said, according to the reports.
The alleged hoarding of oxygen concentrators at Kalra’s restaurants came amid the raging Covid-19 pandemic, with medical oxygen running low in the capital as demand from patients surged. Concentrators, crucial in managing Covid-19, are mainly imported and a scarcity had further aggravated the situation. The industry has been pushing the government to cap the prices of these products at a maximum of three to four times the import landed price.
