Over 50 Crore Mobile Subscribers Who Used Aadhaar Verification Face Disconnection
Customers may have to submit a fresh identification document as part of the KYC process. This could be a copy of the passport, driving licence, voter’s card, electricity bill, gas bill or PAN card.
New Delhi: More than half of India’s phone subscribers are staring at the prospect of disconnection of their sim cards as they were procured on the basis of Aadhaar verification after the Supreme Court last month barred the use of the biometric ID by private firms, including telecom providers.
Around 50 crore mobile subscribers may have to undergo the KYC (Know Your Customer) all over again, the Times of India reported, leading to the possibility that they may get disconnected for a while.
Considering the massive impact it would entail, the central government has stepped in and asked the telecom providers to give customers adequate time to complete the fresh KYC.
Customers may have to submit a fresh identification document as part of the KYC process. This could be a copy of the passport, driving licence, voter’s card, electricity bill, gas bill or PAN card. The government is expected to give a fresh order very soon.
On Wednesday, telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan met the companies to find a way out and is also in talks with Aadhaar body - Unique Identification Authority of India, the newspaper said.
While the government had made it mandatory for people to furnish Aadhaar details to get new connections, crores of old customers would also be affected as their paper documents may have been destroyed by telecom firms.
The freedom to destroy the older documents was accorded by the government in March last year since the documents were going digital by linkage with Aadhaar. Mobile companies say they are waiting for a direction from the telecom department on the issue.