Sc Rejects Plea Against Call-Back Ban

The Supreme Court yesterday declined to entertain a writ petition challenging the ban on the call-back system, asserting it was a matter of government policy and the issue was not within judicial manageable standards.

The call-back system takes advantage of lower international call tariffs of one country compared to another.

An organisation calling itself Environmental & Consumer Protection Foundation had filed the public interest petition challenging the ban. It was argued that the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, was being used by the government to create a monopoly in its favour.

The division bench presided over by Chief Justice J S Verma remarked that this was a public interest litigation and there was a recent tendency to misuse public interest litigation for ulterior motives. The court will not encourage this trend, he said.

Justice B N Kirpal observed that the call-back system could be misused to deprive the Indian government of the revenue which it should get, and instead filled the coffers of foreign governments. He also said that the courts were not the right forum to approach after the setting up of the TRAI. Finally, the petitioner requested the court to permit him to withdraw the petition to take up the issue before the appropriate authorities.

Under the arrangement, a caller from a country with high call charges (like India) rings a call-back operator and places a request for an international call. The call-back operator then connects the Indian caller to the international number requested. Crucially, the call emanates from the foreign network and the Indian caller is billed at international rates which are considerably lower that Indian rates. There is a significant demand for such services in India, with as much as an estimated 10 million minutes of traffic out of a total traffic of 1 billion minutes being routed through call-back operators.

The petitioner had alleged that the ban affected the freedom of expression of citizens. In the case of newsprint, the court had earlier intervened to regulate the controls on newsprint. Therefore, the court should intervene in this case also, the counsel argued.