To curb the menace of fake SIM cards and financial frauds, communications and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday announced new norms for SIM card sellers that will make biometric verification as well as registration with telcos mandatory for them. As per the rules, if SIM card sellers violate the rules and are involved in selling cards fraudulently, they will be prosecuted criminally as well as face a penalty to the tune of Rs 10 lakh. Further, the sellers indulging in illegal activities will be terminated and blacklisted for a period of three years.
The government will also discontinue bulk SIM card sales except for valid business entities who can obtain bulk cards after proper registration and individual verification of employees using those SIM cards.
“We found that lot of dealers are selling SIMs without doing proper verification of consumers. Therefore, in order to put accountability on the sellers selling fake cards, the government has made their verification and registration mandatory,” Vaishnaw said.
The new norms will kick in from October. With regard to the registeration, the process will mandate a written agreement between the SIM card seller and the telcos. Vaishnaw said all the existing card sellers will be registered by telcos within 12 months. There are 1 million SIM card sellers in the country.
“Today, of the companies which acquire SIM cards in bulk for their businesses only 80% are genuine and the rest 20% misuse them. We have decided to discontinue the concept of bulk connections and bring in proper business connection concept,” Vaishnaw said, adding that after proper registration including their GST numbers, PAN card, individual KYC of employees, business connection will be issued.
With regard to bulk SIM cards, currently fraudsters indulge in making errant calls through a device called SIM box that is used for generating automated calls on a single connection. Through this device, after making fraud calls, the SIM cards get deactivated. The new norms will crackdown on such activities, Vaishnaw said.
In May, the government rolled out the Sanchar Saathi Portal that enables people across the country to track and block their lost or stolen mobile phones. Through this portal, people can also verify the authenticity of used devices before making a purchase, and track how many numbers are associated with their identity without their knowledge.
Post the rollout of the portal, Vaishnaw said the government identified 5.2 million fraudulent connections and has deactivated them. Further, it has blacklisted 67,000 dealers indulged in fraudulent SIM card activities, and lodged 300 FIRs against those involved in cyberfrauds.
Further, the government has blocked 17,000 mobile phones reported to have stolen and traced 300,000 mobile phones that were stolen with the help of the Sanchar Saathi Portal, Vaishnaw said.
“All the hotspots from where the cyberfrauds happen have already started feeling the pressure and within next one year, there will be more control over cyberfrauds,” Vaishnaw said, adding that companies like WhatsApp have also collaborated with the government on this and are blocking accounts found fraudulent.
Lately, 66,000 accounts on WhatsApp that were involved in fraud activities have also been blocked as well as 800,000 payment wallet accounts have also been discontinued.
On its plans to reduce the SIM cards on a single ID, Vaishnaw said the government is currently not thinking in terms of that and the individual connections on a single ID will remain nine.
To prevent misuse of printed Aadhaar, the government said the demographic details will mandatorily be captured by scanning QR code of printed Aadhaar. In case of disconnection of a mobile number, the number will not be allocated to any other new customer till expiry of 90 days.