JUDGMENT

Swatanter Kumar, J.-The petitioner is a businessman engaged in the business of distribution of pre-paid virtual and tangible calling value for mobile phone subscribers and also sells new customer acquisition packs and follows it up, by collection of customer application forms and executing tele-calling, to verify customer credentials. In this Public Interest Litigation, the petitioner has attempted to highlight the grave issue of non-observance of norms/regulations/guidelines related to proper and effective subscriber verification by various service providers. In fact, according to the petitioner, there is rampant flouting of norms/regulations/guidelines relating to this subject matter and there is no proper verification of the subscribers prior to selling of the pre-paid mobile connections to them.

2. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (for short, “TRAI”) is the regulatory body for the telecommunications sector in India and the Union of India has responsibility to issue guidelines and frame regulations and conditions of licence, in consultation with the TRAI, to ensure coordination, standardization and compliance with the regulations, as well as protecting the se