Penalty imposed on Telecom operators for non-compliance of customer verification guidelines, says Union Minister for Communications and IT,Ravi Shankar Prasad

Union Minister for Communications and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad in a written reply to the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, said that a total of Rs. 2,179.41 crore was imposed on various telecom operators till September 30, 2014 for violation of customer verification guidelines. 

The maximum penalty was imposed on Aircel (Rs. 486.48 crore) followed by Reliance (Rs. 454.62 crore), BSNL (Rs.329.14 crore), Airtel (Rs. 309.87 crore), Vodafone (Rs.211.85 crore), Idea Cellular (Rs. 123. 44 crore), Tata (Rs. 172.80 crore), Sistema Shyam Teleservices (Rs. 52.31 crore), Uninor (Rs.11.17 crore), MTNL (Rs. 11.17 crore) and STel (Rs. 10.92 crore)

Mr. Prasad added that the Department had found from the audit of customer application forms (CAF) that only about 4% of CAF were non-compliant with the subscriber verification guidelines during 2013-2014. The reasons for non-compliance include missing CAF’s, missing photo/proof of identity/proof of address on CAF, bulk connections issued to an individual or a company or an organization.