The Government has imposed a penalty of about Rs 2,923 crore on telecom operators in the past seven years for issuing mobile connections without proper verifications, Parliament was informed on Monday.
In reply to a question, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also said the government had detected around 1.92 lakh connections issued on fake or forged documents.
“TERM cells have taken actions which include penalty on non—compliant consumer application form (CAF) and filing of complaints/FIR against forged cases. The total penalty imposed so far by the TERM cells on various telecom operators from April 2007 to May 31, 2014 is approximately Rs 2,923 crore,” he said in Lok Sabha.
The Minster said till May, 2014 approximately 4.67 crore CAFs have been audited by the Telecom Enforcement Resource and Monitoring (TERM) cell, of which 28 lakh were found non—compliant.
“As on May 31, 2014, approximately 1.92 lakhs mobile connections have been detected which have been issued on apparently fake/forged documents,” Prasad said.
He said that major deficiencies in issuing mobile connections were related to missing CAF, missing photo or document proof, subscriber’s acquisition based on forged or fake documents, pre—activated mobile connections, more than 9 connections to an individual in one service area etc.
The Telecom Minister said that as on May 31, 2014, the TERM cell has unearthed more than 550 illegal telecom operations.
