The government has made police verification of SIM card dealers compulsory and has discontinued the provision of bulk connections to curb fraudulent activities, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday.
The minister said that the government has disconnected 52 lakh mobile connections. While 67,000 dealers have been blacklisted, 300 FIRs have been filed against SIM card dealers since May 2023.
The minister said WhatsApp on its own blocked around 66,000 accounts that were involved in fraudulent activities.
“Now we have made police verification of SIM dealers mandatory to curb frauds. Penalty of Rs 10 lakh will be imposed on dealers found violating norms,” Vaishnaw said.
He said that there are 10 lakh SIM dealers and they will be given sufficient time for police verification.
The minister said that the Department of Telecommunications has also discontinued the provision of bulk connections and instead a new concept of business connection will be introduced.
“Besides, KYC of businesses, KYC of person taking handover of SIM will also be done,” Vaishnaw said.
He added that the need to create greater accountability for SIM card dealers came after detailed field visits and discussions with telecom service providers and police agencies, which showed that dealers are a major source of fraudulent SIM activities. There are an estimated 1 million SIM dealers in the country.
The new rules, set to be notified by next month, have been triggered by drastically rising numbers of mobile phone-linked frauds.
In May, the government launched the Sanchar Saathi portal, its primary government platform aimed at protecting mobile phone users from various frauds, such as identity theft, forged know-your-customer (KYC), theft of mobile devices, and banking frauds.
The government will also bring in a new business SIM connection rule, which will allow companies to continue buying in bulk but only after revealing their goods and services tax (GST), Permanent Account Number (PAN) and income-tax information.
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