Vodafone and Bharti Airtel were in the leading position in the list of operators whose mobile towers were discovered infringing radiation rules. This was found in an audit carried out by the department of telecom. It later informed Parliament about this situation this week.
“At the time of the audit conducted by TERM Cells, an average of 284 numbers of BTSs set up on different mobile towers by different TSPs have been discovered going beyond the approved limits of EMF radiation as of June 2017,” Manoj Sinha, the telecom minister, claimed to the Lok Sabha in a letter.
Out of the all non-obedient mobile sites, 62 belong to Vodafone, 69 to Bharti Airtel and its subsidiaries, 32 to Reliance Communications, 34 belong to Tata Teleservices and its subsidiaries, 20 Aircel, 22 to Idea Cellular, and 11 to Loop Mobile (working ended now), as per the details shared by the minister.
Eight base stations of Telenor (in procedure of amalgamating with Airtel), 10 base stations each of Reliance Jio and state-run firm BSNL, 2 of Videocon Telecom (amalgamated business with Airtel), 3 of MTNL, and 1 of Sistema Shyam have been discovered non-obedient to radiation norms till June.
Sinha claimed that the primary result from the reviews of WHO is that exposures of radiation from mobile towers under limits approved below the ICNIRP (International Commission on Non Ionizing Radiation Protection) worldwide guidelines do not seem to have any recognized impact on health.
He claimed that in India, rules for limit of exposure for the mobile towers emission are already 10x more severe as compared to the secure limits recommended by the WHO and approved by ICNIRP.
“Making the rules 10x more severe as compared to what has been recommended by the WHO and prescribed by ICNIRP, prevents the requirement for having different rules for extraordinary localities,” claimed Sinha.
The minister claimed that the DoT guiding principles subjected to state governments for mobile towers on August 1, 2013, do not place any constraint on set up of mobile towers near educational institutions, residential area, and hospitals.
Let us see if any action is taken against these towers or not.