Department of telecommunication (DoT) India has issued instructions to mobile service providers to “reverify” it pre paid connection subscribers. Even if a consumer had duly submitted relevant and complete documents at the time of pre paid connections, she is again asked to resubmit the same.This is against the principles of good governance and is a bad policy decision as it is harassing law abiding and honest people. So far millions of connections have been disconnected due to this paranoid drive of DoT, India.
In a welcome step, Praveen Dalal, Supreme Court Lawyer, filed a complaint at DARPG against DoT/Vodafone. He has also sent a show cause cum legal notice to Vodafone.
He has maintained that this process of reverification is violating the consumer law and other laws of India. He has also raised issue of “indemnification’ in case either the previously submitted documents or newly asked documents are misused by any person.
In case of misuse, both mobile service providers like Vodafone and DoT India must be held responsible for the loss arising out of misuse of such documents.
If this drive of reverification continues, consumer cases and civil proceeding may be filed by thousands of people and this situation must be avoided by government of India. When the national litigation policy of India (NLPI) is looking forward for fewer litigation matters, bad policy decisions by DoT India may frustrate the whole purpose.
