The mobile users in Jaipur and Rajasthan got a temporary breather from the Supreme Court, which on Monday stayed a High Court order directing relocation of all cellphone towers from residential areas.
The HC’s November 27 order giving two months time to the mobile phone service providers to relocate the signal boosting towers out of residential areas would have caused disruption of services from January 27.
A bench of Justices H L Dattu and Ranjan Gogoi suspended the HC order for two weeks while issuing notice on separate petitions filed by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and other telecom bodies to Rajasthan government and petitioner on whose PIL the HC had passed the November 27 order.
The SC had earlier stayed an identical order passed by the Punjab & Haryana High Court directing relocation of cellphone towers from Chandigarh’s residential areas.
The Rajasthan HC had passed the order on two PILs, one of which was filed by a former Judge I S Israni, who had alleged that electro-magnetic radiation from the towers increased incidence of cancer, brain tumour, digestive disorders and heart ailments among people. He had quoted an inter-ministerial committee which after examining harmful effects of such towers had concluded that electro-magnetic waves had the potential to “cook human tissues like a microwave oven” if exposed for long.
The HC said, “We have received a large number of communications from the state and across the country that mobile tower radiations are harmful and even the inter-ministerial committee of the central government in its meeting in May 2012 has held so,” the HC said. In addition, the petitioners had said the state on July 4, 2012, had put telecom companies on notice to remove mobile towers from residential areas.
The companies had challenged the bye-laws on erection of mobile towers for 2G/3G services in the state stating that the telecommunication was not a subject on which state could frame laws. There are 32,865 towers in the state, of which 5,678 were in Jaipur.
src: TOI