RAJASTHAN STATE ELECTRICITY BOARD Vs. RAMRIKH VYAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE are appeals by all the three parties in the case.

(2.) A complaint was filed by the Appellant in A. No. 20/95 stating the following facts which are gatherable from the complaint and from the letter dated 30.10.93 that the complainant has written to the District Telecom Manager (Second opposite party) and which is appended to the complaint. The complainant wanted to contact his sister urgently at Madurai. He went to the public booth for STD belonging to the first opposite party. He gave the number to be called to the person incharge. The Number was 46457. As per the complainant a wrong number was called which he quotes as 44768 or so. Therefore, the call was discontinued and his number was called afresh. Thereafter he received two bills the details of which are produced below : -

(3.) AFTER hearing the parties the District Forum found that there was excess collection of one unit per call and came to the following finding. 'Since the STD booth operators have been charging on calls as per their own programme in the computer whereby every consumer was made to pay for one call extra and the second opposite party has directed them to switch over to Electronic Charge Indicators with call monitors operating on 16 Khz pulse as early as on 12.1.93, it is clear that in Pondicherry all STD Booths have been collecting extra charges from customers for every call made in their STD booths. The second opposite party admits that it is incorrect and states that to eliminate the wrong charging they have instructed to instal 16 khz pulse from the Electronic Exchange. Therefore it is clear that in Pondicherry consumers have been made to pay excess charges all this period till they switched over to the correct system. The second opposite party allowed such metering and billing which is wrong and detrimental to the consumers interest. Therefore, it is the duty of the second opposite party to rectify the same'. On the basis of the above finding the Forum gave the following directions: