The Hindu : Front Page : Court notice on unsolicited calls on cell phones

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 08, 2005

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Court notice on unsolicited calls on cell phones

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI, FEB. 7. The Supreme Court today took note of the menace of unsolicited phone calls on mobile phones by issuing notice to the cellular companies and five private banks, among others.

The notice was issued on a public interest petition filed by social activist Harsh Pathak, whose family had to answer a spate of unsolicited and telemarketing calls received on their mobile phones.

A Bench of Justice N. Santosh Hegde and Justice S.B. Sinha sought the response of the Centre, the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd; Hutch; Reliance Telecomm; IDEA Cellular; Bharti Telenet; Citibank; HSBC Bank; Standard Chartered Bank; HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.

The petitioner contended that he and his family members were subscribers of various mobile phone companies. They were annoyed over unsolicited telemarketing calls made to them by cellular phone firms, banks and a host of other companies using telemarketing as a strategy for business promotion. He said a lack of concern on the part of respondents towards the public in general and subscribers in particular in addressing the issue was affecting the fundamental rights of the petitioner and other citizens as enshrined in Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution.

The petitioner said like him and his family, other mobile phone subscribers would also be receiving unsolicited calls from banks offering credit cards, insurance companies, auto finance firms, etc.

He sought a direction to the respondent cellular companies to check, regulate and end the invasion of privacy of subscribers at all times and hours through such unsolicited calls; a direction to the respondents to protect the subscribers from the harassment and invasion of privacy through unsolicited telemarketing calls and any other business promotion calls and to restrain the cellular companies from transferring the data about the telephone numbers to any other company for commercial purpose.

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