Court notice on unsolicited calls on cell phones
By J. Venkatesan
NEW DELHI, FEB. 7. The Supreme Court today took note of the menace of
unsolicited phone calls on mobile phones by issuing notice to the cellular
companies and five private banks, among others.
The notice was issued on a public interest petition filed by social activist
Harsh Pathak, whose family had to answer a spate of unsolicited and
telemarketing calls received on their mobile phones.
A Bench of Justice N. Santosh Hegde and Justice S.B. Sinha sought the
response of the Centre, the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd; Hutch; Reliance
Telecomm; IDEA Cellular; Bharti Telenet; Citibank; HSBC Bank; Standard
Chartered Bank; HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.
The petitioner contended that he and his family members were subscribers of
various mobile phone companies. They were annoyed over unsolicited
telemarketing calls made to them by cellular phone firms, banks and a host
of other companies using telemarketing as a strategy for business promotion.
He said a lack of concern on the part of respondents towards the public in
general and subscribers in particular in addressing the issue was affecting
the fundamental rights of the petitioner and other citizens as enshrined in
Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution.
The petitioner said like him and his family, other mobile phone subscribers
would also be receiving unsolicited calls from banks offering credit cards,
insurance companies, auto finance firms, etc.
He sought a direction to the respondent cellular companies to check,
regulate and end the invasion of privacy of subscribers at all times and
hours through such unsolicited calls; a direction to the respondents to
protect the subscribers from the harassment and invasion of privacy through
unsolicited telemarketing calls and any other business promotion calls and
to restrain the cellular companies from transferring the data about the
telephone numbers to any other company for commercial purpose.
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The Word of the Day for Feb 07 is:
cadre \KAD-ray\ noun
1 : framework
2 : a central unit especially of trained personnel able to assume
control and train others
*3 : a group of people with a unifying relationship
Example sentence:
NASA's cadre of courageous astronauts offered America the modern-day
heroes it needed.
Did you know?
To understand "cadre," we must first square our understanding of the
word's Latin roots. "Cadre" traces to the Latin "quadrum," meaning "square."
Squares can make good frameworks - a fact that makes it easier to understand
why first French speakers and later English speakers used "cadre" as a word
meaning "framework." If you think of a core group of officers in a regiment
as the framework that holds things together for the unit, you'll understand
how the "central unit" sense of "cadre" developed. Military leaders and
their troops are well-trained and work together as a unified team, which may
explain why "cadre" is now sometimes used more generally to refer to any
group of people who have some kind of unifying characteristic, even if they
aren't leaders.
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