Having initiated a battle against Reliance Jio, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has found it fit to escalate it by writing to the Prime Ministers' Office "expressing deep concern" over the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) allegedly favouring the new entrant Reliance Jio, while hurting existing operators such as Airtel, Idea and Vodafone. Even though TRAI Chairman R.S. Sharma on Wednesday refuted these allegations as "baseless", the COAI in the letter addressed to Principal Secretary of PMO Nripendra Misra sought to bring attention to some recent consultation papers and decisions by TRAI such as on mobile termination charges and call drop regulations. These papers, the industry body said, seen along with other recent TRAI decisions, point to a pattern of discrimination against the existing mobile operators. As reported first by Indianmandarins, a war of words had broken out between the existing telecom operators and Reliance Jio after COAI wrote to the DoT to ask the Mukesh Ambani-led firm to snap connections of all its 15 lakh users alleging that it was bypassing the regulations by providing full-fledged service in the guise of testing the network.