IMPORTANT POINT
Such serious issues should be resolved expeditiously.

JUDGMENT

Swatanter Kumar, J.-The petitioner is a businessman engaged in the business of distribution of pre-paid virtual and tangible calling value for mobile phone subscribers and also sells new customer acquisition packs and follows it up, by collection of customer application forms and executing tele-calling, to verify customer credentials. In this Public Interest Litigation, the petitioner has attempted to highlight the grave issue of non-observance of norms/regulations/guidelines related to proper and effective subscriber verification by various service providers. In fact, according to the petitioner, there is rampant flouting of norms/regulations/guidelines relating to this subject matter and there is no proper verification of the subscribers prior to selling of the pre-paid mobile connections to them.

2. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (for short, “TRAI”) is the regulatory body for the telecommunications sector in India and the Union of India has responsibility to issue guidelines and frame regulations and conditions of licence, in consultation with the TRAI, to ensure coordination, standardization and compliance with the regulations, as well as protecting the security interests of the country.

3. It is the averment of the petitioner that the telecom sector has witnessed the most fundamental structural and institutional reforms since 1991. This sector has grown significantly in the last few years. As per the Annual Report for 2009-2010 of the Department of Telecommunication, Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India (for short “DoT”), as on 31st December, 2009, the Indian telecom sector had about 5622.11 million connections. The teledensity per hundred population, which is an important indicator of telecom penetration in the country, has increased from 2.32 per cent in March, 1999 to 47.88 per cent in December, 2009. The Eleventh Five Year Plan for 2007-2012 had provided a target of 600 million connections, but the industry has already provided around 700 million connections, thus far exceeding the target. Different random studies in relation to pre-paid Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards show widespread violation of guidelines for Know Your Customer (KYC) and even other common guidelines. The SIM cards are provided without any proper verification, which causes serious security threat as well as encourages malpractices in the telecom sector. It appears that 65 per cent of all pre-paid SIM cards issued in Jammu & Kashmir and 39 per cent of all pre-paid SIM cards in Mumbai, may have been issued without verification; which means that 1 out of every 6 pre-paid SIM cards is issued without proper verification. The averment is that such unverified SIM cards are also used in terrorist attacks.

4. This Court, in the case of State (NCT of Delhi) Vs. Navjot Sandhu alias Afsan Guru1 [(2005) 11 SCC 600] had, with some caution, referred to a large number of calls which had been made by terrorists from instruments containing unverified SIM cards. It is further averred by the petitioner that around 80 per cent of the pre-paid SIM cards may be purchased in pre-activated form which is in violation of the notifications issued by the DoT, dated 22.11.2006 and 23.3.2009 respectively, banning the sale of pre-activated SIM cards. Another significant fact that has been brought out in this petition is that, pre-paid SIM cards, which are the most commonly issued without verification, constitute 96 per cent of the total SIM cards sold. This indicates the seriousness of the problem as well as the security hazard that emerges from the telecom sector.

5. Thus, the petitioner has prayed that there should be strict implementation of subscriber verification guidelines, physical verification be compulsory in future and physical re-verification of existing subscriber base be conducted in a transparent manner. He also seeks the prevention of inflated subscriber base. On all matters in relation to these prayers, he pleads fo