MTNL pays for "relative" bill

MUMBAI, June 24: They say children should shoulder their parents' dues. The Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) seems to have taken th...

MUMBAI, June 24: They say children should shoulder their parents’ dues. The Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) seems to have taken this axiom too seriously. And has paid for it. It has been hauled up by the Consumer District Redressal Forum for wrongly disconnecting the telephone connection of a Matunga resident after she refused to pay her father’s telephone arrears.

Preeti Thosani’s phone was disconnected in April 1995 after the MTNL asked her to pay arrears amounting to Rs 18,096 of telephone (474730) held in the name of her father. His phone had been disconnected a decade earlier over an excess billing dispute between him and MTNL.

In March 1995, the senior Thosani was informed that if the outstanding dues payable for his line were not cleared within 7 days of receiving the intimation, all other working telephones including the telephone in the name of his daughter would be disconnected.

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The MTNL contends that Thosani’s line had been installed in the premises where her father resided, and he had not paid his bill, hence the disconnection. Thosani wrote a letter stating that she could not be saddled with the liability of her father’s phone dues. Despite the absence of any dispute with respect to her own telephone, her phone was disconnected.

She accused MTNL of resorting to unfair trade practices and trying to coerce her into paying up the dues for her father’s telephone. She was allegedly threatened by the MTNL before her phone was disconnected.

MTNL’s advocate Rajeev Chavan argued that they were compelled to resort to invoking the provisions of Rule 443 of the Indian Telegraph Rules, (ITR) 1951, which permits the opposite party to disconnect all the telephones throughout the country of the subscriber who is a defaulter.

Countering this, Thosani’s advocate Jehangir Gai drew the court’s attention to various High Court decisions under the provisions of the Indian Telegraph Act. For instance, the Bombay High Court had earlier held that rule 443 could not be invoked to disconnect the phone of one subscriber for the fault of another. He argued that this rule does not empower the opposite party to disconnect the phones of relatives or family members of the subscriber, who are separate legal entities.

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In May 1997, a two member bench comprising president R J Purandare and member S R Samant ruled that MTNL’s action amounted to deficiency of service and could not be justified. They were ordered reconnection without charge and without any rent for the period for which the phone was disconnected.

They was also asked to pay Thosani within a month a compensation of Rs 1000 for wrongful disconnection and deprivation of a telephone service and Rs 500 for the case.