Despite instructions from security agencies, the government has decided against banning incoming international calls where the caller line identification (CLI) is not displayed. Instead, International Long Distance (ILD) players such as Reliance, Bharti and VSNL, who carry these calls to India have been asked to continue with the existing procedure until the Department of Telecom (DoT) can devise a new mechanism to tackle the issue.

Last month ET had reported that Indian security agencies had asked ILD carriers to ban incoming international calls where CLI was not provided by the foreign calling party.

The DoT's move comes after both ILD operators and the telecom Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) sought a clarification on the issue. Besides, DoT has also accepted Trai's view on the issue that any decision to stop ILD incoming calls where CLI is not received from the foreign party would raise serious issues like non-completion of substantial international calls from many countries and also have an adverse impact on the collection of Access Deficit Charge.