Chhattisgarh High Court has given two weeks' time to the Centre to make its submission on the proposed increase in tariff of the basic telephone service.
Two local telephone customers yesterday filed a petition in the High Court urging it to cancel the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's
order that increased the monthly rental of the basic telephone service besides decreasing the pulse rate and number of free calls.
"TRAI's main job is to protect the interest of the consumers by ensuring international standard of services by the Indian companies with a proper price. But working against this, it (TRAI) had recommended increase in the tariff", Vivek Vajpayee and Alok Khandelwal said in their petition.
Also, opinion of the consumers was not taken into consideration while taking the decision although several other telephone companies have decreased their tariff, the petitioners said adding that this decision of TRAI would afffect about 35 crore people.
However, Centre's standing counsel Ashutosh Gaikwad requested for two weeks time to get the guidelines from the Centre on the issue, which was granted by the court.
The petitioners have made the TRAI, the BSNL and the Union of India as respondents.