New Delhi: The Centre on Monday assured the Supreme Court that it would find a solution within two weeks to the menace of unsolicited calls being received by mobile phone users.

The Telecommunications Department would call a meeting of all cellular phone service providers, Additional Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam told a Bench consisting of Justices Ruma Pal and Dalveer Bhandari. The court earlier told him, "You must find some solution as it is a serious problem."Acting on a public interest petition filed by social activist Harsh Pathak, the court last year issued notice to the Centre, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam, Hutch, Reliance Telecomm, IDEA Cellular, Bharti Telenet, Citibank, HSBC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank. The matter came up for further hearing on Monday.

The petitioner said he and his family members, subscribers to various mobile companies, were fed up with unsolicited calls made by banking and other firms using telemarketing for business promotion. Lack of concern on the part of the respondents in addressing this issue hurt the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution.

Spam not far away

"No wonder, practically every cellphone owner is getting paranoid about privacy. If telemarketing calls are today's scourge, it is only a matter of time before spam starts inundating the cellphone," the petitioner said. He sought a direction to the respondent companies to end the endemic invasion of privacy and restrain the firms from transferring data about telephone numbers to any other company for commercial purposes.

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