CIC may open floodgates for RTI applicants

This may not be good news for Vodafone, the company that acquired Hutch, from the Central Information Commission (CIC).

Published on: Feb 16, 2007, 20:26:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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This may not be good news for Vodafone, the company that acquired Hutch, from the Central Information Commission (CIC).

The CIC on Friday got an assurance from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) seeking an explanation from Hutch for not acting on the complaint of a RTI applicant ML Aggarwal. The CIC’s decision may open floodgates for RTI applications with TRAI against the mobile service providers.

Aggarwal, who was being charged for add on services without his consent, filed an RTI application with TRAI seeking eight clarifications. He wanted to know whether Hutch was competent to add arbitrary any amount of charges without any written consent from the customers and number of consumers from whom the money is charged. He also sought information about Hutch officials responsible for collecting the charges.

TRAI replied that they have issued direction to Cellular Mobile Access Providers that no chargeable value added service shall be provided to a customer without his explicit consent. TRAI also indicated that any value added service, which was earlier provided free of charge should not be made chargeable without the consent of the consumer. However, on information related to the company TRAI clarified that it does not maintain such details about the companies.

During the hearing at CIC, the appellant Aggarwal informed that despite TRAI’s clarification he was still being charged for the service without his consent.

The Central Public Information Officer of TRAI informed CIC that Hutch has to carry out the direction issued by TRAI and said they would ‘definitely; take up the appellant’s complaint with the company. "If the case is provide that Hutch has violated, they (TRAI) will take up matter in the court," the CPIO assured CIC, informing that the regulatory body also have a quasi-judicial function.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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