L P NAITHANI Vs. ALLAHABAD TELEPHONES ALLAHABAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) All these writ petitions complain of arbitrary and excessive billing of local call charges by the telephone department, i.e., the Union of India. One thing is clear that the matter relating to the complaints of the consumers have to be dealt by the Department itself as it must be seen to be responding to genuine complaints of those telephone subscribers who have a valid grievance. It was with this aspectin mind that the Court had given directions to the Union of India that the record of the petitioners relating to the recording of local calls must be placed before the Court. The Court regrets to place on record that despite several orders, the Union of India evaded bringing the original record at the Bar of the Court despite the fact that a writ of certiorari has been issued. The Union of India took a consistent stand that the original record are either not available or have been weeded out. What was placed before the Court is a despatch record of bills which were issued to the petitioners as subscribers on a card-sheet. This is not a record of recording the meter readings, if recorded directly on a card or a ledger and then on a card. The guard bills, the copies of which were sent to the subscribers nor the files or the ledger which contained the record of recording the readings have not been produced before the Court despite directions and orders of the Court. The Court had also directed that between the petitioners and the telephone department, they must exchange a set of at least six bills, in order of chronology before the filing of the writ petition, on which the petitioners as subscribers and the telephone department providing the utility service were not at issue. The purpose was that the telephone department may act as an arbitrator in taking out an average from the past bills in a chronological order and neither party may pick and choose bills at random to justify its case, on the charge or payment of excessive calls.

(2.) It must be kept in mind that these cases are of a period when computerization of monitoring subscriber call charges had not been inducted by the telecommunication department. This is the period or the era when the stowager exchange recorded calls of subscribers mechanically through rotary digits. Today, each subscribers call, local, long distance or international are programmed through a computer at the exchange. The programme even permits a subscriber to self look the appliance to make long distance or international calls. Of course, even modern information technology can be prone to errors.

(3.) The defence of the telephone department has been that the record is not available. This leads the Court to presume that there is a disinclination to produce the record and the best evidence is being kept away. In the circumstances, the Court has no option but to rely upon the record submitted by the petitioners and yet the telephone department itself can take a decision on the petitioners' grievances. What the petitioners have filed is, in fact, the record of the telecommunication department, as bills presented to them for payment, the master copy of which and the ledger of the record of readings or the card-index on which the meter readings were entered, if recorded, is with the department. If the telephone department is hesitating to bring the record before the Court, they cannot rely on a lost record after these proceedings are over, to judge the petitioners.