HYDERABAD: After a fake “press release” claiming to have been issued by the National Security Council (NSC) of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) went viral on social media on Thursday, Hyderabadis, at many places in the city, were seen buying stockpiles of groceries, mainly basic necessities like cereals and pulses, to hoard them. The fake release claimed that some essential services will be curbed or blocked from Wednesday midnight, including groceries, supermarkets and malls.
According to information, the people started panicking when they considered the current restrictions, on educational institutions, movie theatres, public facilities like swimming pools, pubs, gyms and religious gatherings, and the (fake) release, that was being widely circulated on social media, in tandem.
However, it may be mentioned here that Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, while addressing the media on Thursday, had clarified that all malls, stores, supermarkets and such will remain open. While there are chances that some grocers might exploit the situation by jacking up the prices, as many supermarkets are already removing discount labels that were in place earlier, the officials of the Civil Supplies Department said that the pricing of food products sold in loose are out of their purview.
LMD files 57 cases
As the people are now listing hand sanitisers under their note of ‘essentials’, some traders have started exploiting the situation as well like always. In the light of this, the Legal Metrology Department (LMD) on Thursday booked 57 cases against various retailers and manufacturers for violating the weights and measurements of hand sanitisers and also for overpricing them. The deputy commissioner of LDM-Hyderabad, Vimal, said: “A total of 10 cases have been registered in the last one week for price violations and the rest were booked under various norms of faults in weights.”