The government has imposed penalty of Rs 108 million on telecom operators till May 31, 2015 for exceeding the prescribed limit of radiation from mobile towers.
According to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the maximum penalty of Rs 21.5 million was imposed on Bharti Airtel, followed by Rs 18 million on Vodafone, Rs 16.5 million on Reliance Communications, Rs 14.5 million on Tata Teleservices Limited, Rs 9.5 million on Idea Cellular, Rs 9 million on Aircel, Rs 7 million on Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, Rs 5.5 million on Loop Telecom, Rs 1.5 million on Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, Rs 0.5 million on Sistema Shyam Teleservices, Rs 3.5 million on Uninor and Rs 1 million on Videocon Telecom.
During 2015-16 (up to May 31, 2015), six base tower stations (BTSs) were found exceeding the prescribed radiation limit on actual testing. The number of towers exceeding the limit stood at 103 in 2012-13 and 77 in 2013-14, while none of the towers were found to exceed the limit in 2014-15.
Telecom Enforcement Resource & Monitoring (TERM) field units of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) are tasked with the job of auditing self-certificates submitted by telecom operators and tower infrastructure providers to ensure compliance to the prescribed norms of EMF radiations from mobile towers.
Earlier in 2012, the government had lowered the EMF exposure limit to one-tenth of the then-existing levels. Following this, in January 2013, the government had increased the penalty for violation of actual EMF radiation norms from Rs 0.5 million to Rs 1 million per BTS per incidence.