The Delhi High Court today set aside the order of the Telecom sector regulator capping SMSes at 200 per day per person for personal communications. The court however, upheld the curb for unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) SMSes, saying that the UCC massages disturb the recipients, intrude into their privacy and impose a cost in terms of time and efforts.

The court's direction came on a plea filed by NGO Telecom Watchdog against the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India -TRAI, challenging its imposition of a cap of 200 SMSes per day per person. TRAI had last year ordered telecom firms to limit the number of SMSes per day per SIM to 100. However, acting on a number of representations, the TRAI later enhanced the cap to 200 per SIM.