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| Pre-paid cell phone ban goes, conditions come | | |
NEW GUIDELINES
- Every existing pre-paid subscriber shall be re-verified through his identity proof and address;
- Students, government employees and security force personnel have to get identity certificates from their departmental heads;
- The details should be sent to law enforcement agencies, police and telecommunication office for verification and in the event of negative report from authorities, the existing SIM shall be disconnected or no new connection issued; and
- No multiple connections, unless necessary, should be issued.
EARLY TIMES
NEW DELHI, JAN 21: The ban on new pre-paid mobile connections in Jammu and Kashmir was today lifted by the Government which unveiled fresh guidelines for the telecom operators limiting the number of connections to a household to six.
The ban, imposed on November one last year, stands lifted with immediate effect, an official notification issued by the Department of Telecom said here.
With this, a massive exercise to re-verify nearly 38 lakh pre-paid phone subscribers would be undertaken by the telecom operators which will have to follow the revised guidelines for issuing a new connection.
"It has been decided to restore issuance of pre-paid mobile services in Jammu and Kashmir in accordance with the revised guideline. Upon completion of re-verification, existing pre-paid subscriber shall be allowed the facility of recharge," the DoT notification said.
The fresh guidelines stated that though no customer will be given more than one pre-paid or post-paid connection, but if an individual desires to avail for more connections, he will have to give reasons for it.
Under no conditions, one household in the state shall be entitled to more than six connections, it said.
The new mobile connections would be issued only against documents having photographs of the customers and at the end of every month, a list of fresh connections would be submitted to state police and telecom watchdog -- TERM.
"In case of a negative report from the authorities about any customer, the connection shall be disconnected within two hours of receipt of the report," the DoT said.
Further, the new guidelines say that for students, employees of state and Central government and PSUs a fresh certificate mentioning the identity and address of the person concerned and issued by the head of the organisation may be accepted as proof of identity and address.
For officers, jawans and families of armed and para-military forces, a fresh certificate for similar identity shall be issued by the Commanding Officer.
The guidelines also stated that the service provider shall prepare a new machine-numbered Customer Acquisition Form (CAF) for each subscriber to record data relating to name, address and photograph of the subscriber and the telephone number allotted to them.
"The previous CAF shall be cancelled and retained for a period of two years," it said.
A daily and a monthly list of the re-verified pre-paid mobile telephone subscribers shall be sent to the nodal officers of the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA), state police and the TERM cell for information.
In case of post-paid subscribers, the guidelines said, if the bill sent to a post-paid mobile telephone subscriber is returned or if the bill remains unpaid for 90 days, the service provider shall inform the authorities and they should then immediately verify the case and advice the service provider suitably.
The notification stated that "if a subscriber provides false information and obtains a mobile telephone connection, the mobile telephone connection shall be liable to be connected without prejudice."
While the punishment for the operators violating the ban was not mentioned in the notification, official sources said that higher monetary penalties, cancellation of dealership and a possible jail term for telecom company officials have been suggested.
The Union Home Ministry had imposed the ban on pre-paid mobile phone services and Home Minister P Chidambaram had recently said that if the service providers come up with a fool-proof plan of 100 per cent verification and the ministry was satisfied with it, then the issue may be revisited.
Jammu and Kashmir government as well as Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had been taking up the issue with the Centre asking it to work out a solution at the earliest.
The state government had favoured a policy for the telecom operators for resuming pre-paid mobile services in the state which should include stringent action besides financial penalties for firms not complying with verification process.
The state had maintained that it did not have any issue over the pre-paid ban and wanted the telecom operators to behave in a disciplined manner.
Listing out the reasons for ban of mobile phones, the DoT note said mobile telephone services were allowed in Jammu and Kashmir in the year 2003, eight years after they were introduced in the rest of the country.
"The use (and misuse) of mobile telephones has been under careful watch since 2004.
"Intelligence inputs available with Central government indicate that mobile telephones, especially pre-paid mobile telephones, were used extensively by militant organisations in Jammu and Kashmir, including militant groups functioning from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK)," the DoT said.
It was also noticed that implementation of the procedure for obtaining mobile telephone connections, especially pre-paid ones, was "extremely lax and such laxity has led to misuse of mobile telephone services by militants."
Hence, government took the extreme step of banning all new pre-paid mobile telephone connections as well as renewal of existing prepaid mobile telephone connections with effect from November 1, 2009, pending the formulation of a new system of re-verification of existing subscribers and verification of new subscribers and issue of mobile telephone connections (both pre-paid and post-paid).
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