Consumer Commission upholds Rs 12,000 damages to old woman

Dismissing an appeal against an order of the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum here, the Maharashtra Consumer Commission rapped a telecom provider in Kalyan for alleged harassment of an elderly woman, who applied for a telephone connection under 'Tatkal' category and upheld the payment of Rs 12,000 as damages for service deficiency.
Expressing displeasure over the manner in which the Telecom department (General Manager) had acted towards the senior citizen, the Commission President Justice R C Chavan and member Dhanraj Kamatkar recently upheld the order of the District Forum of ordering payment of Rs 12,000 as compensation and damages to the ailing lady.

"This shows the negligent, careless and scrupulous attitude on the part of the 'service provider'," it observed.
The case relates to Meenakshi Patankar, a resident of Dombivili, when in early 1994, she had applied for a telephone connection under the Tatkal category and made a payment of Rs 1,000 initially. Thereafter, she made an additional payment of Rs 29,000 on September 29, 1994.
In her complaint, she alleged that as per the 'Tatkal' scheme, the telephone connection should have been installed within a period of fifteen days. However, the telecom service provider installed the connection on 12/10/1994.
The complainant further alleged that after installation of the instrument, the connection used to be out of order. Similarly, she was not receiving the telephone bills regularly.

Despite complaints from time to time, there was no response from the service provider. According to Patankar, she is an old lady aged 80 and is suffering from many ailments and is practically bed-ridden and needs to keep in contact with her relatives for which she had taken the telephone connection.

Considering all these things as "deficiency in service" on the part of the telecom service provider, she approached the District Forum.
The District Forum after going through the complaint, written version filed by the service provider, evidence filed by the complainant on affidavit and the reply filed by the complainant to the written version of the 'service provider', came to a conclusion that there is deficiency in service on the part of the telecom service provider.

It then partly allowed the complaint directing the opponent/service provider to pay to the complainant an amount of Rs 10,000 by way of damages, besides costs of Rs 2,000 within a period of two months and failing which the amount of damages shall carry interest at 10 per cent per annum.