Centre to Take Legal Action Against Telemarketers Amid Rising Digital Frauds

Mumbai: With the rise in digital fraud, the Centre is soon going to classify annoying calls and other types of ‘not so welcome’ commercial communication as unfair trade practices. The move will make such callers and message senders criminally liable under consumer protection laws. Under Section 2 (28) and 2(47) of Consumer Protection Act, 2019, unwarranted or unsolicited commercial communication is misleading and unfair trade practice.

As per media reports, the Department of Consumer Affairs is a few months away from issuing new guidelines on the issue. Telemarketers and their principal entities like banks, real estate companies or other consumer-facing businesses will be held accountable for sending promotional or transactional messages or making such calls for customer conversion.

The prime focus will be to hold fraudulent callers accountable and ensure that all promotional and transactional communications happen only through the authorised channels.

In February the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution formed a committee to draft guidelines to address unsolicited commercial calls. The committee then advised telemarketers from various sectors to prefix their phone numbers with the 140 number series so that consumers can identify the caller.