PIL filed in Supreme Court seeking to Set Free the Services for calling, data DTH, and streaming platforms during Coronavirus lockdown
(Syed Ali Taher Abedi)
16-04-2020.
A PIL filed before Supreme Court by Advocate Manohar Pratap seeking the direction to the service providers such as Bharti Airtel, RelianceJio, Amazon Services and others to provide free and uninterrupted calling, data and streaming services during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The petitioner contends that Govt. of India has imposed a lockdown on March, 24,to curb the spread of a contagious pandemic called Corona Virus disease (COVID-19) and restricted physical movement of the individuals except to certain exempted personnel’s.
This lockdown meant that physical movement of the individuals (except some exempted persons) were restricted to their home and all transportation services were stopped.
Factories were shut down. Due to this Lakhs of migrant laborers who were working in different parts of the country got stranded in various parts of the country with or without their families.
As the mental and psychological health are as important as physical health and less has been done in this regard by the Government during lockdown. Most of the persons who got stranded away from their family and friends are living in deep psychological stress and there has been even 13 2, 3 instances of suicides due to fear of isolation during treatment of Corona Virus Disease.
Seamless, unlimited are free audio and video communication means will allow the stranded persons away from their family to contact them which will help them to deal with present emergent situation in better manner psychologically.
The petitioner submitted that availability of free means of communication and entertainment will be greatly beneficial for the psychological health of the citizens at large in these distresses’ times.
The petitioner makes special mention of those citizens and submits that a free and unlimited access of the channels on satellite TVs (DTH) will give a new means of entertainment to the viewers which will help to combat the psychological pressure which is being mounting on the individuals being confined in indoors or who are kept in isolation. J. Because the individuals who are confined in home or in quarantine facilities are also not having any means to get phones recharged since online re-charge facilities are not available for all.
Petitioner prayed this among other grounds
- take appropriate steps to deal with psychological pressure mounting on individuals due to lockdown or kept in quarantine;
- provide completely free and unlimited viewing facility of their channels and other contents to their subscribers for the period of lockdown as declared by the Govt. of India;
[Read Petition]
