Matters relating to Cyber Crime are under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) as per allocation of the business rules. Department of Telecommunications (DoT) undertakes efforts to prevent misuse of telecom resources for cyber frauds. MHA has established the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) as an attached office to provide a framework and eco-system for Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to deal with cyber-crimes. MHA has also launched the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal- NCRP (https://cybercrime.gov.in) to enable public to report all type of cybercrimes. Number of complaints reported on NCRP for 2022, 2023 and 2024 are 10.29 lakh, 15.96 lakh and 22.68 lakh respectively.

DoT has developed an indigenous AI and Big data Analytic tool ASTR to identify mobile connections taken by same person in different names and disconnected more than 82 lakhs such connections through ASTR after they failed reverification.

DoT has put in place a robust Know Your Customer (KYC) framework for issuing mobile connections to subscribers. DoT has issued guidelines which mandates telecom licensees to register their Point of Sale (PoS), who enrolls customers and issue SIMs on behalf of the licensees, through biometric verification, physical verification of address of place of business & local residence of PoS. The guidelines also have provisions for maintaining an online supply chain management of SIM cards, penal action for violation including termination of agreement and blacklisting of PoS across all Telecom Service Providers (TSPs).

Further, the DoT has also amended existing KYC instructions and introduced business connections framework where KYC of each end-user is made mandatory before activation. In addition, a robust KYC process for SIM Swap / replacement has also been introduced.   

This information was given by the Minister of State for Communications and Rural Development, Dr. Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha.

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Samrat / Allen

(Release ID: 2153524)