Parliament Question: Sanchar Saathi Initiative for Telecom Security and Consumer Protection

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 1708 ANSWERED ON 29TH JULY, 2026 SANCHAR SAATHI INITIATIVE FOR TELECOM SECURITY AND CONSUMER PROTECTION 1708. SHRI PRADEEP KUMAR SINGH: SHRI BALABHADRA MAJHI: Will the Minister of COMMUNICATIONS be pleased to state: (a) the progress made under the Sanchar Saathi initiative during the last one year including the number of lost or stolen mobile devices traced, blocked, recovered and the action taken against fraudulent mobile connections including details for the Nabarangpur Lok Sabha Constituency of Odisha; (b) the measures taken to protect telecom consumers from cyber frauds, spoofed calls, spam communications and misuse of mobile connections through technology enabled solutions including their implementation in the Nabarangpur Lok Sabha Constituency; (c) the major digital services made available through the Sanchar Saathi portal and mobile application for the convenience of citizens along with their utilisation in the Nabarangpur Lok Sabha Constituency; and (d) the steps taken to further strengthen telecom security, consumer awareness and digital trust through this initiative, including the special measures taken for the Nabarangpur Lok Sabha Constituency? ANSWER MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT (DR. PEMMASANI CHANDRA SEKHAR) (a) The progress made under the Sanchar Saathi initiative of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) during July 2025 to June 2026 is as under: i. Number of lost or stolen mobile devices blocked, traced & recovered are 20.59 lakhs, 11.11 lakhs & 6.99 lakhs respectively. ii. Based on 6.4 lakh reports of suspected fraud communication shared by citizens on Sanchar Saathi, 35.48 lakh mobile connections have been disconnected. Lok Sabha constituency wise data is not maintained. (b) DoT has taken measures to protect telecom consumers from cyber frauds, spoofed calls and misuse of mobile connections through technology enabled solutions which have been implemented throughout the country including Nabarangpur Lok Sabha Constituency. These measures, inter-alia, include : 1i. Sanchar Saathi initiative of DoT enables citizens to report the suspected fraud communications. DoT uses this crowd-sourced data to carry out analysis and to zero down on misuse of telecom resources. ii. DoT has developed Financial Fraud Risk Indicator. This is a risk-based metric that categorises a suspicious mobile number according to its probability of being associated with medium, high or very high risk of financial fraud. iii. DoT has developed international incoming spoofed calls prevention system which is a system to identify and block incoming international spoofed calls displaying Indian mobile numbers. In addition, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has implemented Distributed Ledger Technology based system under the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations for curbing spam. (c) Sanchar Saathi web portal and mobile App of DoT are available to citizens across India including Nabarangpur Lok Sabha Constituency. Key digital services of Sanchar Saathi include facilitating citizens to: i. report suspected fraud communications, ii. know mobile connections in their name & report connections which are not required or not taken by them, iii. report lost/ stolen mobile handsets, and iv. check genuineness of mobile handset. (d) DoT is actively promoting telecom safety, consumer awareness and digital trust through widespread multilingual awareness campaigns including explainer videos & infographics on social media platforms, SMS campaigns, student volunteers through Sanchar Mitra scheme. These initiatives are being taken on pan-India basis. ***** 2