TRAI DND Rules for Telemarketing (2026 Guide)

Not legal advice. This guide summarises public TRAI, DoT and MeitY material as of 20 October 2026, plus press coverage where the original order was not available to us. Rules change and their application depends on your facts. Have Indian telecom and privacy counsel review your calling set-up.

Two years ago most small telecalling teams treated TRAI rules as something banks and big call centres worried about. That changed with the 2024 crackdown, when TRAI reported that telcos had blacklisted over 50 entities and disconnected more than 2.75 lakh SIP, DID and mobile resources in two weeks (TRAI press release 61/2024). It changed again in February 2025, when TRAI amended the core regulations.

If you run a 5-100 person team that calls leads from ads, portals and enquiries, this guide explains what applies to you, what does not, and what to put in place this quarter.

The rulebook in one table

Instrument	Date	What it does for a calling team
TCCCPR 2018	2018	The base regulation for commercial calls and SMS. Created the DLT registration system and the customer preference (DND) framework
Digital Consent Acquisition direction	2 June 2023	Telcos to build a common digital consent system using the 127xxx short code (TRAI PR 118/2023)
Direction on unregistered telemarketers	13 Aug 2024	Promotional voice calls from unregistered senders on SIP, PRI or other resources to be stopped; violators face disconnection for up to two years and blacklisting (TRAI PR 61/2024)
TCCCPR (Amendment) 2025	12 Feb 2025	10-digit numbers barred for telemarketing; 140 for promotional, 1600 for service/transactional; tougher penalties; 90-day consent lock (TRAI PR 11/2025)
1600-series direction for BFSI	19 Nov 2025	Phased deadlines for regulated financial entities to move service calls to 1600 (PTI report)
TRAI clarification on 1600 and 140	10 July 2026	1600 calls cannot be tagged, blocked or filtered; 140 series is for promotional calls by entities across all sectors (SCC Online summary)
DPDP Rules 2025	14 Nov 2025	Operationalise the DPDP Act 2023 with an 18-month phased compliance period (PIB backgrounder)

TCCCPR 2018: the foundation

The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR) govern every commercial call and SMS in India. Three ideas run through it:

Principal Entities (PEs). The business on whose behalf messages or calls go out. A real estate developer, an NBFC or a coaching institute is a PE.
Registration on DLT. Senders, headers, SMS content templates and consents are registered on a blockchain-based Distributed Ledger Technology platform run by the telcos. Telcos scrub traffic against it.
Customer preference. Subscribers choose what they want to receive through the National Customer Preference Register, better known as DND.

Commercial communication is split into promotional (selling to someone who has not consented), service (related to an existing relationship or explicit consent) and transactional (OTPs, alerts tied to a transaction). The category decides which number series and which rules apply.

The February 2025 amendment: what changed

TRAI’s press release of 12 February 2025 lists the salient changes. The ones that matter most for telecalling teams:

10-digit numbers are out for telemarketing

The amendment “restricts senders from using normal 10-digit numbers for telemarketing, ensuring that all commercial communications originate from designated headers or specific number series.” For a team that has been running promotional campaigns from a stack of prepaid SIMs, that is the headline. It is no longer a grey area.

140 for promotional, 1600 for service and transactional

The 140 series continues for promotional calls. The 1600 series is designated for transactional and service calls. Both show up as recognisable caller IDs, so the person you call can tell what kind of call it is before answering.

Tougher penalties on senders

First violation of the regulatory threshold: outgoing services on all of the sender’s telecom resources barred for 15 days.
Subsequent violations: all telecom resources, including PRI/SIP trunks, disconnected across all operators for one year, and the sender blacklisted.
Action is triggered at 5 complaints in 10 days (previously 10 in 7), and consumers can now complain up to 7 days after a call (previously 3).
Telcos must analyse patterns such as unusually high call volumes, short call durations and low incoming-to-outgoing ratios to flag potential spammers in real time.

Telcos themselves face graded financial disincentives of ₹2 lakh, ₹5 lakh and ₹10 lakh per instance for misreporting complaint counts, which gives them every reason to enforce.

A sender cannot seek consent again from a customer who opted out until 90 days after the opt-out. The customer can still opt in any time.
Consent given to complete an ongoing transaction is valid for 7 days only.
Implicit consent for service calls lasts only for the duration of the contract with the customer.
Promotional messages must carry an opt-out option.
The amendment brings in disclosure requirements for the use of auto-dialers and robo-calls. If you are choosing a dialing mode, our power vs predictive dialer guide explains why this matters most for predictive dialing.

140 vs 1600: who qualifies

This is where most confusion sits, especially with vendors loosely offering “1600 numbers” to any business.

1600 series

The 1600 series is for service and transactional calls by entities regulated by RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA, plus government-to-citizen calls. It is not a general “business number” option. A real estate broker, an edtech start-up or a solar installer will not qualify.

TRAI’s direction of 19 November 2025 set phased deadlines, as reported by PTI:

Entity	1600 adoption deadline
Scheduled commercial banks (public, private, foreign)	1 January 2026
Large NBFCs, payments banks, small finance banks	1 February 2026
Mutual funds/AMCs and PFRDA entities	15 February 2026 (as reported)
Remaining NBFCs, co-operative banks, regional rural banks	1 March 2026
Insurance (IRDAI-regulated)	To be notified after discussion with IRDAI

Some secondary sources list a February 2026 date for insurers. The PTI report of the direction itself said the insurance timeline was still under discussion, so check the latest TRAI or IRDAI notice before relying on any date.

TRAI’s clarification of 10 July 2026 added that 1600 calls “cannot be tagged, blocked or filtered”, which is why banks want them: a customer sees a verified service number, not a spam warning.

140 series

The 140 series is for promotional calls by entities across all sectors, who must register with a telco under TCCCPR. Customers’ DND preferences apply to 140 calls. If someone has blocked the real estate category, your 140-series campaign for a new launch should not reach them.

What about calling your own enquiries?

Most telecalling in India is not cold promotion. It is calling back someone who filled a Facebook Lead Ad, sent an IndiaMART enquiry, gave a missed call or asked a question on 99acres. That is a response to a customer-initiated request, and it is usually done from a telecaller’s phone.

Two cautions:

Keep proof. Store the lead source, timestamp and consent text for every lead. If a complaint arrives, “she filled our form on 14 October at 7:42 pm asking about 2BHK prices” is a far better position than “we bought this list”.
Do not stretch it. A lead who enquired about one project eight months ago, or a list bought from a data vendor, is not the same thing. If the call is really promotional, it belongs on registered 140-series numbers with DND scrubbing.

DND and the customer preference register

The glossary defines NCPR, DLT, TCCCPR and related terms in a paragraph each. Customers register preferences through the 1909 short code (SMS or call), their telco’s app, or the TRAI DND app. They can choose:

Fully blocked: no promotional communication at all.
Partially blocked: block all categories except those they choose to receive.

The commonly published preference categories are banking/insurance/financial products, real estate, education, health, consumer goods and automobiles, communication/broadcasting/entertainment/IT, and tourism and leisure. Category code numbers differ across published sources, so check the current list on your telco’s DLT portal rather than hard-coding numbers into your process.

What DND means in practice: run every imported list (event registrations, old Excel files, partner leads) against the NCPR before any promotional campaign. Inbound enquiries you are responding to are a different case, but keeping a DND flag on every lead helps you avoid mistakes when someone moves a lead into a promotional list later.

DLT, headers and templates

If you send SMS (follow-up reminders, site visit confirmations, payment links), your business must be registered as a Principal Entity on a telco’s DLT portal, with approved headers and content templates. The 2025 amendment adds header suffixes so customers can see the message type: “-P” for promotional, “-S” for service, “-T” for transactional and “-G” for government.

For voice, registered promotional calling runs through 140-series numbers allotted via telcos or registered telemarketers, with the same DLT-based scrubbing.

TRAI directed telcos in June 2023 to build a Digital Consent Acquisition (DCA) system. Consent-seeking messages go from a common 127xxx short code, state the purpose and brand clearly, and confirmations carry revocation information. TRAI said that once DCA is implemented, consents acquired through other means become void and fresh consents must be taken digitally (PR 118/2023). Rollout has been gradual and led by banks; check with your telco whether DCA applies to your category yet.

DPDP Act: lead data and call recordings

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 applies to the names, numbers, notes and recordings in your CRM. The Rules were notified on 14 November 2025, with an 18-month phased compliance period, so most duties bite from around May 2027. Your team is the Data Fiduciary (you decide why leads are processed). Your CRM vendor is usually a Data Processor.

What it means for a telecalling operation, per the PIB summary of the Rules:

Consent notice. A separate, clear notice explaining the specific purpose. On a lead form: “We will call and WhatsApp you about [project/course/loan]. Calls may be recorded for quality.”
Withdrawal and erasure. People can withdraw consent at any time and ask for erasure. Requests for access, correction or erasure must be answered within 90 days.
Security safeguards. Failure to maintain reasonable security can attract penalties up to ₹250 crore. Not notifying a personal data breach can attract up to ₹200 crore.
Contact point. Publish who people can contact about their data.

Call recordings are personal data: a voice identifies a person. Indian law has no explicit one-party or two-party recording rule for private businesses, so the safe practice is to announce recording at the start of the call or in your consent notice, state the purpose, restrict access and delete on a schedule. See our call recording page for how recording sync works on Android.

A practical checklist for telecalling teams

Use this as a working list for your next team meeting.

Lead intake

Every lead stores its source, capture time and the consent text shown.
Bought or rented lists are not dialled from personal SIMs.
Imported lists are scrubbed against NCPR/DND before any promotional use.

During calls

Telecallers introduce themselves and the company by name in the first sentence.
Recording is disclosed where calls are recorded.
A “Do not call” outcome exists and blocks the number from all queues.
Opt-outs are honoured immediately and locked for at least 90 days before any re-consent request.

Numbers and channels

Promotional campaigns run only on registered 140-series numbers.
Regulated BFSI service calls use 1600-series numbers by the applicable deadline.
SMS uses DLT-registered headers and templates.

Data

Role-based access: telecallers see their leads, not the whole database.
Recordings and lead data have a retention period and a deletion process.
You can export or delete a person’s data on request.
Your vendor has a data processing agreement and a security page you have read.

How CRM Dialer helps

CRM Dialer is built for calling people who asked to be called. Every lead stores its source and consent text. Imported lists can be scrubbed against DND. The “Do not call” outcome removes a number from every queue and blocks re-contact for 90 days. Recording disclosure prompts, an audit log, role-based access and data export or deletion support your DPDP duties. For registered promotional campaigns, cloud calling adds 140-series numbers through licensed telecom partners.

Read more on lead management and call centre software, see how we handle loans and insurance teams on /industries/loans-insurance/, or talk to us about your set-up.