New Delhi, Dec 14 (IANS): Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are "supporting and furthering insinuations and false and frivolous rumours" of Reliance being an undue beneficiary of the farm bills, Reliance Jio has said in a complaint to TRAI.
In the complaint letter, Reliance Jio has told S.K. Gupta, Secretary, TRAI that Airtel and VIL are running an unethical and anti-competitive MNP campaign to capitalise on the ongoing farmer protests in northern parts of the country.
"These companies continue to remain directly and indirectly involved in supporting and furthering insinuations and false and frivolous rumours of Reliance being an undue beneficiary of the Farm Bills, for unethical pecuniary benefits in the form of inducing porting of RJIL customers," RJio said.
"We submit that Airtel and VIL remain unabated in this vicious and divisive campaign through its employees, agents and retailers. They are inciting the public by making preposterous claims that migrating Jio mobile numbers to their networks would be an act of support to farmers protests," RJio said while attaching pictures.
RJio said that in order to reap meagre gains in port-in numbers, these service providers are intentionally defaming RJIL by depicting it as being against farmers and projecting themselves as being farmer friendly, while at the same time fanning anti-government protests.
The campaign is not limited to northern states and this false propaganda is being spread across the country to get some additional MNP port-ins, it said.
"We once again bring to your kind attention that as a result of the aforementioned false propaganda of the competitors to affect customer perception, we have been receiving large number of port-out requests wherein the customers are citing this as the sole reason for porting out of Jio without having any complaints or other issues related to Jio service," it said.
Reliance Jio said these advertisements and behind the scenes defamation campaigns are not only false and misleading in nature but are also in clear violation of the spirit of transparency and misleading tariff advertisements under TRAI directions.
"We also reiterate that such illegal actions with blatant use of sales teams and channel partners to instigate feelings against RJIL can severely jeopardise safety and security of our personnel as well as vital network and business installations on the ground. The Authority being a statutory body responsible for telecom sector, should take immediate and strict actions to avoid any such eventualities," RJio said.