The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has launched Tarang Sanchar, a web portal for information on mobile towers and EMF emission compliances.

India telecom minister Manoj Sinha said the launch of Tarang Sanchar website will clear doubts and misconceptions about possible radiation from mobile towers in the minds of Indian mobile phone users.
India, according to TRAI data, has more than 1,000 million mobile subscribers including owners of two SIMs and in-active users.

PK Pujari, secretary of DoT, said DoT has prescribed standards for electromagnetic emissions from mobile towers. Indian standards are 10-times stricter than international standard prescribed by the International Commission on non-ionizing radiation protection (ICNIRP) and recommended by World Health Organization (WHO).

Tilak Raj Dua, director general of TAIPA, earlier said that the Indian telecom industry has installed additional 212,917 base stations in India during June 2016 to February 2017, taking the total number of base stations to 1.5 million.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court, in a recent order, has asked Indian telecom operator BSNL to shut down a mobile tower within seven days after a petitioner claimed the radiation from the tower had given him cancer.

Harish Chand Tiwari, who works at the residence of Prakash Sharma in the Dal Bazar area of Gwalior, moved the Supreme Court complaining that a BSNL tower illegally installed on a neighbour’s rooftop in 2002 had exposed him to harmful radiation for the last 14 years.

Rajan S Mathews, director general of COAI, earlier said 8 high courts had earlier held that radiation emanating from mobile towers were not hazardous to human health.

Government of India in its affidavit also had provided evidence of the same, stating clearly that it has one of the strictest norms across the world on electromagnetic fields (EMF) emission from mobile towers.

Damini Juyal and Siddharth Jaiswal
[email protected]