The Bombay High Court Hon’ble Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Bharathi Dangre dismissed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Gansham Ramchandani in the year 2016 to set up an independent Ombudsman in telecom sector.According to Petitioner’s Counsel Mr. Hitesh Ramchandani, nearly 10 millions complaints are filed every quarter and there is no independent authority...
The Bombay High Court Hon’ble Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Bharathi Dangre dismissed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Gansham Ramchandani in the year 2016 to set up an independent Ombudsman in telecom sector.
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 petition was filed to appoint an Ombudsman for Telecom Service Provider Companies. The PIL was filed to appoint an Ombudsman in telecom industry who will be an independent body to redress and pass orders and penalize the service providers for complaints and grievances against telecom service providers and compensate consumers.
After Filing this PIL in the year 2016, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) later on gave recommendations that there is a need to set up an independent Ombudsman in Telecom Sector.
The Parliamentary panel also raised a concern over delay in setting up Ombudsman in Telecom Sector. 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 Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and TRAI were gearing up to amend the TRAI Act by introducing Bill in parliament in order to set up Ombudsman in telecom sector.
The High Court dismissed the petition and stated that it will be unnecessary to appoint 1 person by each telecom service provider to deal with 10 million complaints in a quarter.
The reply filed by the DoT showed that after filtering through the two tier redressal mechanism system put in place where 10 million complaints per quarter are handled, only about 7000 complaints reach DoT every year. This shows that the redressal mechanism is working fairly effective.
The High Court accordingly dismissed the petition.