By IANS
New Delhi : Terming unsolicited telemarketing calls to cell phone users as “nuisance”, the Supreme Court Thursday asked the government to frame guidelines and regulations to stop the menace.
A two-member bench headed by Justice A.K. Mathur asked the government to submit its guidelines against telemarketing calls and needed to be stopped.
The bench asked the government to submit the rules and regulation by the next date of hearing July 27.
The move comes after Vivek Tankha, counsel for petitioner Harsh Pathak, told the court that despite the government’s persistent claims of various steps taken to stop telemarketing calls, it has done nothing to put an end to the woes of the telephone subscribers and protect their privacy.
Pathak had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) against indiscriminate telemarketing calls, contending that these calls invaded privacy of the citizens as they are made at odd hours without any concern that they might be interfering and distracting the attention of a phone user from a possibly important work.
On Pathak’s lawsuit, the court had earlier issued notices to 11 respondents including the central government, various cellular operators and nationalised banks and had sought their response to the issue.