Madras High Court orders notice to TRAI, Bharti Cellular
Amid uproar over the allocation of 155 coal acreages between 2004 and 2009 to some 100 companies, NDTV talks to chairman and managing director of NTPC, Arup Roy Choudhury about the scam and future plans of the power producer.
An advocate has slammed Bharti Airtel for allowing commercial short message service and promotional telephone calls to cellphones of lakhs of its subscribers and sought an interim direction to Airtel to immediately activate 'Do Not Disturb' (DND) facility to his mobile.
When the writ petition filed by advocate K Ramakrishna Reddy came up in the Madras High Court, Justice S Rajeswaran directed Airtel to immediately give effect to its DND facility by blocking unwanted messages and promotional telphone calls to the petitioner's cellphone and his add-on connection.
The Judge also admitted the petition and ordered issue of notice to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and Bharti Cellular Limited (Airtel).
Stating that after over a score of SMS to Airtel failed to evoke any response from the company, the advocate said he had sent two registered letters on March 4 and May 6 last year to the company. In reply to his second letter, he was told to note down SMS details such as phone numbers, contact numbers, gist of the message and the time the SMS was received.
Alleging that the firm was allowing the SMS and promotional phone calls to enrich itself, he said between June 8, 2011 and June 30, 2011 he had received about 55 SMS/calls.
The petitioner said he had sent a tabular form containing the details asked for by the company.
He said he had demanded a total sum of Rs 5,20,000 as consequential damages together with an interest of 24 per cent per annum and Rs 45,000 per month from March this year till the date the DND facility was put in place.
The petitioner sought a direction to TRAI to take appropriate action againt Bharti Cellular for "violating" the regulations governing the DND facility.
