MTNL rapped for wrongful STD billing

MUMBAI, August 10: The State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has pulled up the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd's MTNL vigilance de...

MUMBAI, August 10: The State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has pulled up the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd8217;s MTNL vigilance department for wrongly charging a subscriber for STD calls and asked it to pay Rs 27,982 to the subscriber.

Kamala S Issar, an MTNL subscriber who doesn8217;t have STD facility, had complained her phone had not been working between June 1991 to September 1991. But she was asked to pay a bill of Rs 15,145 for the same period.

Issar disputed the bill, according to which Rs 14,344 of the total amount were in respect of foreign trunk charges. She requested MTNL to investigate the matter, but her request wasn8217;t granted.

She was sent another bill on November 15, 1991, and charged Rs 26,893 for foreign trunk calls. She refused to accept this bill too, following which her telephone was disconnected for non-payment of bills.8217; She met the telephone authorities on January 1, 1992 and explained her position. After this, her bill which included foreign trunk calls was kept in abeyancepending investigation into the matter.

She paid the amount charged for her local calls on January 2, along with Rs 720 as arrears, and her telephone was subsequently reconnected. But on May 6 the same year, the connection was again snapped for non-payment of the disputed amount.

Issar then filed a complaint with the Bombay Suburban District Redressal Forum, which ordered restoration of the telephone connection and asked MTNL to pay Rs 17 per day to the complainant from May 6, 1992 till the day the phone was reconnected. MTNL appealed to the state commission against the district forum order.

MTNL advocate S I Shah argued it had a computerised record of the trunk calls and 90 tickets which clearly suggested the complainant had made trunk calls to various countries. But the president of the state commission, Justice A A Halbe, observed that the counsel for Issar, Jehangir Gai, gave a copy of international calls 8212; based on the records submitted by MTNL 8212; which showed that no international calls were madeby the complainant.

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The judge said it also showed several calls had exceeded nine minutes8217; duration, when the rules required that after nine minutes, a call had to be terminated and a fresh call booked.