The petitioners urged that “Local calls”, “trunk calls” and “STD facilities” are well-defined statutory concepts under Indian Telegraph Rules 1951 and that “Inter-SDCA calls” or “Intra-SDCA” calls are variations of these statutory terms. Thus the definition of “Local call” under Rule 2(x) of Indian Telegraph Rules, 1951 is “a call from subscriber’s line to another line on any exchange within the same exchange system.” Rule 2(WW) defines “trunk call” as “call on trunk line”, and Rule 2(xx) defines “trunk line” as “a telephone line connecting an exchange system with another exchange system or a Public Call Office on which a fee is levied for a conversation on the basis of the duration of the conversation.” Rule 2(yy) defines STD facility as “the facility whereby the subscribers can obtain trunk calls without the assistance of the operators by use of the dial provided.” The petitioners therefore stressed that any call from one exchange system to another exchange system was basically a trunk call and that the telecom authorities could not possibly give a direction not to levy service charges on inter-SDCA calls as long as these did not strictly come under the statutory definition of “local calls”. The petitioners further argued that inter-SDCA calls include calls to areas which were earlier charged at 8,12,36,48,90 seconds per unit and that merely by enhancing the duration of the calls to 180 seconds per unit such calls could not be brought within the definition of local calls. Other considerations urged were the investments made by the PCO-owners, most of whom were either educated unemployed or belonging to deprived/handicapped sections of society, which could be recovered only through the levy of service charges and the mushrooming of STD PCO-s which has worsened the economic condition of the existing PCO-owners. The petitioners therefore felt that both on legal grounds and socio-economic considerations they should be permitted to levy service charges on inter-SDCA calls also.
