Reliance Jio blasts COAI for 'lying'

Jio said it would place on record its protest against the "gross and serious acts of breach of trust, fraudulent conduct and gross misrepresentation of facts with wilful and deliberate intent to malig

The ongoing battle between existing telecom operators and impending entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm has intensified.

The latter, part of Mukesh Ambani's group of companies, has now written to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), accusing it of taking unilateral decisions at the behest of incumbents, on sending representations to the government. And, has threatened legal action.

Reliance Jio is also a COAI member. It has said it should have been consulted, and its comments and views considered, as part of any representation COAI intended to send to any government official.

Jio said on Monday, it got an e-mail from COAI at 3:05 pm, stating “COAI expects to send to the respective government officials in the continuing matter of Jio’s test programme”. Whereas, the body had already sent the attachments to government officials as early as 12:50 pm. 

“Your e-mail is, therefore, a blatant lie and a fraudulent act, inasmuch as Reliance Jio is being reached out to post facto, making it appear the said attachments were actually not sent, as at the time of sending your e-mail,” Jio said in a letter to COAI Director General Rajan Mathews.

Jio has marked a copy of the letter to finance minister Arun Jaitley, telecom minister Manoj Sinha, the prime minister's principal secretary, Nripendra Misra, telecom secretary J S Deepak and sector regulator R S Sharma.

Jio said prior to the COAI e-mail, there had been no communication in any manner on the intent or contents of COAI’s attached letters.

Hence its charge of “gross and serious acts of breach of trust, fraudulent conduct and gross misrepresentation of facts, with willful and deliberate intent to malign and damage” Jio's interests. 

COAI, it added, was deliberately and maliciously acting at the behest of and as a mouthpiece of certain specific dominant operators, having a vested interest against it.

Evidence, it added, of COAI openly promoting cartelisation in the guise of promoting the industry's cause, "while actually perpetrating anti-competition practices and misguiding and misinforming government, statutory authorities and consumers”, Jio said in the letter.

It further said the incumbent operators were themselves willfully and deliberately in violation of the licence conditions by restricting interconnection augmentation, mobile number portability and the like.