NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide afresh a question that will significantly impact India’s 1,172 million telephone subscribers — whether they are consumers under the Consumer Protection Act entitled to move consumer forums for deficiency in service by telecom service providers?

A bench of Justices Indu Malhotra and Ajay Rastogi issued notice to Bharti Airtel on a petition filed by Gurgaon-based subscriber Nilesh Madurwar who complained that the district consumer forum had rejected his plea against the service provider on the ground that the SC in a 2009 judgment had ruled that telephone subscribers could not move consumer forums as under Section 7B of Indian Telegraph Act , 1885, the aggrieved telephone subscriber had to go for arbitration against the telecom authority for resolution of any dispute regarding service.

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Vanshaja Shukla told the bench that the department of telecom had clarified in 2014 that power of a ‘telegraph authority’ was not vested in private telecom service providers and, hence, Section 7B of Telegraph Act had no application to disputes between telephone subscribers and private service providers and that forums constituted under the Consumer Protection Act were competent to entertain disputes between individual telecom subscribers and service providers.

She said despite the clarification, the Gurgaon District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum relied on the 2009 SC judgment to dismiss Madurwar’s petition, which claimed that despite completing all formalities for mobile portability from Idea to Airtel, the latter did not activate his incoming calls and SMS for 17 days.

Shukla argued that the district forum chose to reject the petition despite the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) ruling in 2014 that Section 7B of the Telegraph Act would have no application and the forum constituted under Consumer Protection Act would be competent to entertain disputes between individual telecom subscribers and service providers.

The counsel also said the Gurgaon district consumer forum fell in error as Section 2(42) of Consumer Protection Act defined service as: “Service means service of any description which is made available to potential users and includes, but not limited to, the provisions of facilities in connection with banking, transport, processing, supply of electrical and other energy, telecom, boarding or lodging or both, housing construction, entertainment, amusement or the purveying of news or other information, but does not include the rendering of any service free of charge or under a contract of personal service.”

