Consumer affairs ministry to issue guidelines to curb pesky calls, messages

Consumer Affairs Secretary Nidhi Khare on Friday said the department will soon issue guidelines for the prevention of spam calls and messages to safeguard consumers' interests.

In June, the Department of Consumer Affairs came out with draft guidelines to address the issue of pesky/promotional or unsolicited commercial calls received by consumers.

"The Department of Consumer Affairs had started working on prevention of pesky calls, and we had to engage with all the stakeholders in this," Khare told reporters on the sidelines of a CII event here.

The Department of Telecommunications was also coming out with rules, he said, adding, "we slowed down because we wanted to actually give the sector regulator full powers".

The secretary further said the telecom industry wants certain guidelines to be put out for safeguarding consumers' interest under the Consumer Protection Act.

"We are working on it, and very soon we will come out with the guidelines for prevention of pesky calls," Khare said.

Recently, telecom industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) wrote to the department to notify the final guidelines.

The draft guidelines, which were prepared after consultations with stakeholders, including telecom firms and regulators, defined "business communication" as any communication related to goods or services like promotional and service messages but excluding personal communication.

The draft guidelines stated that these will apply to all entities making or benefiting from such communications; classify communications as unsolicited if they don't comply with recipient consent or preferences; and bar communications that violate Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI's) rules on commercial messages.

The ministry had said the draft guidelines aim to address unregistered marketers using private numbers, which remain unregulated despite TRAI's 2018 rules for registered telemarketers.

The ministry also stated that while the 'Do Not Disturb' registry has been effective for registered telemarketers, communications from unregistered sources remain unchecked.

The draft guidelines seek to protect consumers from invasive and unauthorised marketing.

While the TRAI had issued final rules to stop the menace of pesky calls and messages in 2018, however, the regulator again issued stringent direction this year in a phased manner with some modification.

The regulator has set December 11 to implement mechanism for tracing of messages and stop transmission of all messages that do no comply with the guidelines.