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GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS
DEPARTMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS
RAJYA SABHA
UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 651
TO BE ANSWERED ON 05TH FEBRUARY, 2026
SIM CARD KYC PROTOCOLS
651 SHRI SAKET GOKHALE:
Will the Minister of Communications be pleased to state:
(a) the number of mobile connections disconnected between January 2022 till date due to forged
documents or links to cybercrime;
(b) the specific mechanism and technology adopted by TSPs to prevent the mass issuance of SIM
cards using forged documents and the number of point-of-sale agents penalised for this during the
last three years; and
(c) whether it is a fact that over 6,00,000 Indian SIM cards were being used in scam operations
in South-East Asian countries between April and June 2025 and if so, the details of investigation
undertaken, the reasons for the lapse and the details of action taken?
ANSWER
MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT
(DR. PEMMASANI CHANDRA SEKHAR)
(a) Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has
established National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP) (https://cybercrime.gov.in) which
enables public to report incidents pertaining to all types of cyber-crimes. So far, more than 11.14
lakhs SIM cards as reported by Police authorities have been disconnected. Further, based on audit of
Customer Acquisition Form by field units of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and use of
ASTR (an indigenous Artificial Intelligence and big data analytics tool developed by DoT), more
than 88 lakh mobile connections suspected to have demographic data and image mismatch were
disconnected after failing reverification.
(b) As per DoT instructions an individual category customer can subscribe to maximum of six
mobile connections in Jammu & Kashmir, Assam & North-East License Service Areas (LSAs) and
nine in the rest of country. DoT instructions prescribe blacklisting and/ or filing of complaint/ FIR
against defaulting Point of Sales (PoS). Till date, 76,394 PoS have been blacklisted and 714 FIRs
have been lodged based on analysis of disconnected mobile numbers through ASTR, reports of
NCRP, and Sanchar Saathi.
(c) 2.58 lakh NCRP complaints filed between April to June 2025 were analyzed and 5609 mobile
numbers linked to these complaints that were found roaming in South-East Asian countries were
disconnected after failing reverification.
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