The Hindu : MTNL asked to pay for deficient services

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 04, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

MTNL asked to pay for deficient services

By Mandira Nayar

NEW DELHI, FEB. 3. It was a long silence that he had to endure for more than a year to get "paid" for. Waiting endlessly for his telephone to ring, despite making repeated complaints to Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, it took a consumer court to finally tilt the scales of justice in favour of Pawan Kumar Agarwal. Unfortunately, Mr. Agarwal's is not a lone example it seems as another Delhiite took MTNL to court for the same reason.

In the first case, Mr. Agarwal's telephone became non-functional in February 2003. Despite making repeated complaints to MTNL, the only response he got was "complaint is already registered" and officials refused to register a new complaint as the old one was pending. With his life at a standstill as MTNL refused to entertain a new complaint till the old one was cleared, Mr. Agarwal was forced to remain `disconnected' from the world for more than two weeks.

After going through all the evidence, a bench of the district consumer disputes redressal forum stated that MNTL was guilty of "deficiency in service'' and directed the company to allow rent rebate to Mr. Agarwal for the period of March 1, 2002 to April 15, 2002. The company was asked to pay Rs. 1,000 towards as costs.

MTNL in its defence argued that they had tried to attend to Mr. Agarwal's complaint several times but never found him at home. The company further claimed that Mr. Agarwal was not living at the address which he had specified which amounts to the misuse of telephone under Rule 421 of the Indian Telegraph Rules. A claim, which a bench of the consumer court stated was not relevant, as no papers were brought on record to prove their contention.

In another case, Naresh Kumar had to face a similar problem as his telephone remained non-functional for long periods of time. Despite more than a dozen complaints to MTNL, his telephone remained dead from May 1999 to March 2000. Demanding his rent back, Mr. Kumar turned to the consumer court for justice.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi