HC issues notice to NGO on Vodafone Essar's petition

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has admitted Vodafone Essar's petition challenging the Delhi State Consumer Commission's interim order restraining the telecom major and all other mobile service providers from holding schemes, contest or lottery as part of their promotional activities.

The petition has been jointly filed by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Vodafone Essar as the Commission's order was made applicable to all service providers.

The Commission on August 22 passed an order saying that prima facie Vodafone's scheme of offering a free gold coin and bumper prize of Maruti SX4 car by way of lucky draw to itssubscribers was a case of unfair trade practice. It held that the scheme was not to the subscribers' interests but to merely ensure that users make more calls towards generating more revenue for the service providers.

The only qualifying condition under the scheme was that the subscribers should have talked for a minimum of 20 minutes in a day making it clear that the offer was not linked with the tariff.

After hearing brief arguments of advocate Navin Chawla, appearing for the petitioners, the Court issued notice to Society of Catalysts, an NGO that had filed the complaint against the company before the Commission.

Contending that Vodafone Essar was not given an opportunity to be heard, Chawla said the interim order virtually decided the complaint in favour of the NGO by restraining it (the company) from carrying its promotional schemes for which it had spent a considerable amount of money.

The telecom major also submitted that the Commission had proceeded without considering the well-settled principles of law whether a promotional campaign of this kind resorts to an unfair trade practice as per sections of Consumer Protection Act and MRTP Act 1969, he said.