Accountability on Unwanted Commercial Calls

The Centre will soon classify pesky calls and other modes of unsolicited commercial communication as unfair trade practices, as it seeks to check financial fraud being perpetrated primarily through mobile phones. The move will make such callers and message-senders criminally liable under consumer protection laws.

The Department of Consumer Affairs is working to bring relevant guidelines in a couple of months. These will put accountability on telemarketers and their principal entities – such as banks, real estate companies or any other consumer facing business – while sending promotional or transactional messages or making such calls for customer conversion.

Unwarranted or unsolicited commercial communication is misleading and an unfair trade practice under section 2(28) and 2(47) of Consumer Protection Act, 2019 respectively. The guidelines will also define a pesky or fraudulent call and list the types of communication that will be deemed unsolicited or unwarranted.

They will focus on fixing accountability and ensuring all promotional and transactional communications happen only through the authorized channel.

The guidelines also propose to prohibit all communication in violation of the number series prescribed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.