No fingerprints stored during SIM re-registration: Tarana

State Minister for Telecom Tarana Halim yesterday reiterated that fingerprints taken for SIM re-registration are not being stored.

"Crooks with a motive to trip biometric registration have been misleading people on the issue since the beginning," Tarana told officials of mobile phone operators, National Identity Registration Wing, intelligence agencies and the home ministry at the secretariat.

"Some people, especially those who use mobile connections for criminal activities are trying to confuse people."

"I think the process will ensure people's safety and security," Tarana said.

Gen Sultanuzzaman Md Saleh Uddin, director of the National Identity Registration Wing, and Gen Md Emdad, a director of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, both echoed Tarana during the meeting.

Mobile operators are only matching subscriber fingerprints to those saved with the Election Commission's central database, and are not preserving them, according to Tarana.

Telecom Secretary Md Faizur Rahman Chowdhury requested the home ministry to find out those who are opposing biometric registration.

On March 2, a petition was filed by a Supreme Court lawyer SM Enamul Huq, and on Monday the High Court questioned the legality of biometric fingerprints for SIM registration.

The court in its rule directed the government to explain within the week as to why it should declare the collection of citizens' biometric information for SIM registrations illegal.

As of February, there are 13.1 crore active SIMs in the market, about 40 percent of which have already been re-registered since the initiative was launched on December 16 last year.

No mobile operators have any link with those opposing biometric SIM registration, said TIM Nurul Kabir, general secretary of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh.

"Each operator has invested more than Tk 100 core in the re-registration project, and has no reason to create any confusion on the issue."

"Fingerprints are not stored anywhere as per the directive of the regulator," said Rajeev Sethi, chief executive of Grameenphone, the market leader that has already re-registered about 2.32 crore customers or 41 percent of its subscriber base.

Banglalink has deployed 40,000 devices for smooth re-registration, Banglalink CEO Erik Aas said.

Tarana said the government plans to finish re-registration by April 30 and will later decide the fate of SIMs that are not re-registered by then, even though it had earlier decided to bar them immediately.