Panel on SIM card norms
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday set up a joint expert panel to recommend the procedure for the telecom firms to properly identify the customers before issuing them SIM cards.
A Supreme Court Bench comprising Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justice Swatanter Kumar said that the probe panel comprising the officials of the Department of Telecommunications and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will submit the report to the government within a period of three months.
This order was passed on a petition filed by one Avishek Goenka seeking a direction to the government to frame guidelines for the telecom firms for issuing SIM cards.
The petitioner averred that the verification norms are necessary in view of the recent investigation into the terror attacks wherein the mobile telephones were used and the connections for the same were given on the basis of fake documents.
Goenka further averred that both in the Mumbai and Delhi bomb blasts the investigation had reached a conclusion that the cellular phones used by the accused were operating with SIM cards secured on using bogus documents.