Consumer fora can hear telecom rows

In an unprece­dented and first-of-its-kind case, the Maha­rash­tra State Com­mis­sion con­sti­tuted a spe­cial five-member bench to answer a ref­er­ence whether tele­com dis­putes are main­tain­able under the CPA. This required to be done since two dif­fer­ent smaller benches had given con­flict­ing rul­ings on the issue. The con­fu­sion arose because of a Supreme Court judg­ment in the case of Gen­eral Man­ager Tele­com v/s M Krish­nan, where it was held that a dis­pute between a tele­graph author­ity and a con­sumer is not main­tain­able under the CPA and requires to be decided through arbitration.

The mas­sive 29-page land­mark judg­ment was passed by the Maha­rash­tra State Com­mis­sion after hear­ing the advo­cates for MTNL, BSNL and Bharti Air­tel and the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Bom­bay Tele­phone Users’ Asso­ci­a­tion, which had inter­vened in the mat­ter and argued on behalf of all the con­sumers. The judg­ment, which was deliv­ered on Novem­ber 6, 2012, by Jus­tice S B Mhase along with judi­cial mem­bers S R Khan­zode and P N Kashalkar and non-judicial mem­bers Dhan­raj Khamatkar and Naren­dra Kawde, was recently made available.

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Consumer fora can hear telecom rows