Bulk sale of sim cards banned; agents need police verification

livemint.com:

₹10 lakh will be imposed. The government has given 12 months for compliance where all existing sellers will be registered with the telcos. The move will help in identifying, blacklisting and eliminating rogue sellers from the carriers’ systems.

Under the KYC reforms, for preventing misuse of Aadhaar, demographic details will mandatorily be captured by scanning QR code of printed Aadhaar of the individual taking new sims or applying for a fresh sim on an existing number. In case of disconnection, the mobile number will be allocated to a new customer after 90 days. A subscriber has to undertake complete KYC for replacement of his SIM and there will be bar of 24 hours on outgoing and incoming SMS facilities.

The second set of reforms is in addition to those introduced in May 2023 that included the Sanchar Saathi portal for reporting stolen or lost mobile handsets and blocking them, and AI based software ASTR for identifying illegal mobile connections. DoT has since been able to detect 6.6 million illegal mobile connections, disconnected 5.2 million connections, blacklisted 67,000 point of sales and blocked 17,000 mobile handsets. More than 300 FIRs have been registered against more than 1,700 points of sales or sellers, while 66,000 WhatsApp accounts have been blocked.

Also, 800,000 bank or wallet accounts used by fraudsters have been frozen as well. Out of about 1.8 million subscriber complaints about fraudulently registered mobile connections in their name, 926,000 complaints have been resolved. Out of 750,000 complaints about stolen or lost mobile handsets, 300,000 mobile handsets have been traced, the department said on Thursday.