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Mtnl Appeal no. FA-8/1054
(Appeal against the order dated 15.10.2008 passed by District Forum , North , Tis Hazari, in complaint case no.1410/2007)
MTNL,
Khursheed Lal Bhawan,
Janpath, New Delhi.
…..Appellant/O.P.
through
Ms. Leena Tuteja, Advocate
V
Shri S.K. Saxena,
D 1/1, MCD Officers Flats,
10, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines,
Delhi-110054.
……Respondent/complainant
through
Shri Aatri Slip, Advocate.
CORAM
Justice Barkat Ali Zaidi, President.
M.L. Sahni, Member
1. Whether reporters of local newspaper be allowed to see the
judgment?
2. To be referred to the reporter or not?
M.L. SAHNI, MEMBER
1. This appeal by MTNL, the Opposite Party before the District Forum , has been filed assailing the order dated 15.10.2008, whereby, the Appellants have been directed to treat the calls made by the complainant (Respondent before us) on mobile phones as local calls and raise the bills accordingly without any surcharge for late payment. It is further directed that the Appellants would also charge all other similarly placed subscribers accordingly. Rs. 5,000/- as compensation and Rs. 2,000/- as cost of litigation have also been awarded in favour of Respondent, vide the impugned order.
2. Facts , giving rise to this appeal, are that Respondent is a subscriber of telephone no. 23932131 allotted by the Appellant. The grievance of the Respondent was with respect to two bills, the details of which are, bill no. 2061241010 for an amount of Rs. 6,159/- and bill no. 2051425279 for Rs. 11,967/-.
3. In the complaint filed before the District Forum, the Respondent alleged that the Appellant had charged huge amount on account of call charges in bill no. 2051241010 and bill no. 2051425279 and an amount of Rs. 4,987/- and Rs. 3,328.80 paise respectively has been charged in excess on account of called-charges ; that excess amount is being charged to the calls made on the mobile phones ; that he has not received any notice that the calls made to mobile phones would be treated as trunk calls i.e. the call would be for one minute and charged accordingly ; that no recorded warning was given in case of trunk call ; that is one call is over and the conversation continues, it would be counted as second call on the same number itself; that the Respondent had taken Tri Band Subscription on 17.08.2006, however, he had not signed any contract and he was not given any warning that excess downloading of data would be charged ; that exhorbitant amount has been charged to the extent of Rs. 5,119.00 on account of Tri Band subscription ; that the said amount requires to be reduced and the calls made on mobile numbers be treated as local calls ; that the bill be charged on the basis of six monthly average prior to these two disputed bills; and that amount charged on account of Tri-Band subscription be also cancelled.
4. Refuting the allegations made by the Respondent in the complaint, the Appellant admitted before the Ld. District Forum that the Respondent is the subscriber of Telephone no. 23932131. It was pleaded by the them that at no point of time any complaint with respect to the excessive billing had been made, with respect to the telephone bills, prior to the filing of the complaint before the District Forum ; that the said bills had been raised as per the actual meter reading ; that fortnightly meter reading would show that in the past also, the number of calls made by the respondent had been on higher-side i.e. bill dated 11.07.2005 shows 4553 calls made and bill dated 11.09.2005 was for 2268 calls ; that there was no chance of misuse of the telephone of the respondent ; that the reason as to why the bills with respect to the telephone of the Respondent were on higher side, was because most of the calls had been made to mobile numbers and as per the tariff plan, the calls made from landline to mobile numbers were charged as one call per minute. Call details of the telephone number of the Respondent w.e.f. 1.5.2006 to 31.08.2006 showing the details of the numbers called along with the date and time and duration of the call are shown in Annexure-4 ; that the bills have been raised as per the metered calls and there was no negligence or deficiency on the part of the Appellant ; that as per the tariff plan, a call made from the landline to mobile phone, the pulse rate is 1 minute per call. This scheme had been given wide publicity as per Annexure A 5 ; that, merely because the Respondent has shown his ignorance of the tariff plan cannot be a ground for giving any concession to the respondent, to cancel the bills which are being raised for the calls having actually been made by the respondent, all the subscribers are always well informed by way of wide publicity regarding any change in any tariff plan through notification in newspapers and through hoardings; and the tariff plans are also available on internet ; that even in the past, before the date of disputed bills, had been raised charging the calls made on the mobile phone for one minute pulse ; that the calls made to mobile from landline cannot be treated other than trunk call ; that the Respondent had subscribed for Tri Bank facility w.e.f. 17.08.2006 and prior to this, the Respondent was accessing the internet through dial up facility ; that the charges applicable in respect of the Tri Band services and dial up facility are different by calculated ; ; that in case of dial-up facility, the charges are as pre the duration of the session, while in case of Tri -Band Services, the charges are as per the applicable plan and depend upon the amount of the data downloaded and also on the speed of the connection subscribed to ; that prior to 17.08.2006 the Respondent was using the dial up facility and for the same, the charges were mentioned in the bill dated 9.9.2006 i.e. Rs. 523.20 paise ; that after the Respondent having subscribed to Tri Band subscription w.e.f. 17.08.2006, the charges for the same were Rs. 5,119.06 paise for the period 17.08.2006 to 31.08.2006 detailed as under :
Minimum charges for broadband Rs. 96.29 paise
CPE rental Rs. 38.71 paise
Total usage (MB) Rs. 5177.61 paise
Free limit(MB) Rs. 193.55 paise
Amount payable after adjusting free
Limit (MB) Rs. 4984.06 paise
Rate per MB are Rs. 1 /-
Extra usage charges comes to Rs. 4984.06 paise
Total charges Rs. 5119.06 paise.
Shown in annexure - A6
That, the bills with respect to the Broad Band subscription for the period 01st September, 2006 to 30th September, 2006 was to the tune of Rs. 12,232/- which itself shows that the Respondent was a heavy user of the internet.
5. We have heard the Ld. Counsel for the Appellant and the AR of the Respondent who submitted that the written reply already filed by the Respondent be taken into consideration, while disposing of this appeal. Accordingly, we have carefully perused the same, whereby the impugned order is stated to be perfectly justified praying further , that ,
i) the orders be passed for the execution of the relief granted to the petitioner by District Forum only to Respondent rather than all other similarly placed customers all over Delhi & India. Because this proposition involves huge revenue in terms of crores of rupees earned by MTNL by this method only and provides scope to MTNO to file appeal.
ii) MTNL be directed to give clear and understandable Tariif Plans henceforth using the language understandable by common-public directly to the customers on the reverse of its bills in its advertisements in the newspapers and also through recorded cassettes on telephone in clear terms on the internet, including printed warning regarding rates of usage and approval /agreements to pay higher tariff/amount on internet itself like other service providers such as Reliance etc.
6. We have thoughtfully considered the contention of the Ld. Counsel for the Appellant. We have also examined the documents placed on record by the parties. Appellants have not filed the copy of the original complaint. It is , therefore, not possible to ascertain as to how far the impugned order has exceeded its limits. No doubt blanket relief granted to all the subscribers placed in similar situations to be treated alike as per the relief granted to the Respondent, prime- facie appears to be traversing jurisdiction not vested in the Ld. District forum. The Respondent also accedes to this fact in his written reply to the appeal.
7. So far as the Respondent is concerned his sole grievance before the Ld. District Forum was that over charging in the billing for period from 17.8.2006 to 31.8.2006 as Rs. 5,114/- is excessive and the Ld. District Forum recorded its finding that “ A perusal of the bill dated 09.09.2006 will show that the opposite party has charged Tri Band subscription of Rs. 5,114/- from 17.08.2006 to 31.008.2006 which ( also seems to be exhorbitant for 15 days period” . To this exent the impugned order is perfectly justified because Respondent who is senior Govt. officer working as Dy. Secretary (Coordinating ) with MCD cannot be disbelieve that out of the list of telephone calls made, large number of calls are not known to him and that he had made complaints to the Appellants earlier also for excess billing.
8. It is also the case of the Respondent that Inspector’s Report (Annexure 3) of the Appellant does not mention any External Electronic Device or External Tampering, to prove that possibility of misuse of connection externally cannot be ruled out. Thus the contention of the Respondent has been rightly appreciated by the Ld. District Forum. It is admitted case of the Respondent that he has made use of the telephone and internet .
9. However, since we find the following part of the impugned order beyond the scope of jurisdiction vested in it, the same requires medication :
“ and direct the Opposite party treat the calls made by the complainant on mobile phones as local call and raise the bills accordingly without any late payment surcharge”.
10. Hence modifying the impugned order, we allow the appeal partly and direct the Appellant that they shall raise the Bill for the disputed period afresh on the basis of average use by the Respondent during the period six months prior to 17.8.2006 without levying any surcharge for late payment of the bill for the period i.e. 17.8.2006 to 31.8.2006. Amount of compensation and cost as awarded by the Ld. District Forum shall remain unaltered , while future bills shall be raised as per the tariff plan to which the Respondent subscribes.
11. FDR / Bank guarantee, if any, furnished by the appellant be returned to the appellant forthwith after completion of due formalities.
12. A copy of this order as per statutory requirements be forwarded to the parties free of charge and also to the concerned District Forum and , thereafter , file be consigned to Record Room.
Submit Complaint..
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