Bombay HC Dismissed PIL To Set Up Ombudsman In Telecom Sector On 23rd Aug 2019

The Bombay High Court Hon’ble Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Bharathi Dangre dismissed the PIL filed by Gansham Ramchandani in the year 2016 to set up ombudsman in telecom sector to redress the Grievances of Telecom users.

According to Petitioner’s Counsel Mr. Hitesh Ramchandani, nearly 10 millions complaints are filed every quarter and there is no independent authority to redress the grievances of Telecom Complaints.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India does not entertain individual complaints and the Department of Telecommunications only acts as a facilitator and only forwards the complaint to the service provider. The DOT does not penalise the service providers for not redressing the complaints. The two tier mechanism is not effective since the service provider are themselves the Judge in their own cause, these telecom service provider close down the complaints without redressing it.

On 4th April 2018, Justice Kemkar and Justice Karnik had directed the centre to propose steps to set up an Ombudsman in Telecom Sector and soon in May 2018 the TRAI’s 14 year old proposal for ombudsman was cleared.

The Hon’ble Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Hon’ble Justice Bharati Dangre dismissed the petition and stated that it will be uselessness of appointing 1 person by each telecom Service provider to deal with 10 million complaints in a quarter.

The reply filed by the Department of Telecommunications brings out that after filtered through the two tier redressal mechanism system put in place where 10 million complaints per quarter are handled only about 7000 complaints reach Department of telecommunications per year. This shows that the redressal mechanism is working fairly effective. Accordingly the Court Dismissed the Petition.―CT Bureau