Ravinder Saini
Tribune News Service
Jhajjar, February 8
Several shoe manufacturers in Bahadurgarh industrial town are causing a huge revenue loss to the Central Excise and Service Tax authorities by illegally transporting their products without inscribing Maximum Retail Price (MRP) on them with an intention to evade tax.
This came to light when a team of the central tax authority recently conducted a preliminary inquiry after seizing 12 vehicles loaded with shoes being taken to other places from Bahadurgarh without imprinting MRP on them. The market value of these shoes is around Rs 38 lakh. As per sources, the tax authority has initiated the process to slap penalty on the erring shoe manufacturers.
Bahadurgarh, located on the border of Delhi and Haryana, is a hub of footwear industry having more than 500 small and large-scale shoe manufacturing units. A special footwear park has been developed in the town from where shoes are transported to Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan and UP.
Sources say MRP is also obligatory on the shoes to restrict shopkeepers from selling it on prices higher than the actual rates. It is also learnt that the manufacturers used to inscribe higher rates on the shoes later to get maximum profit.