The Ministry of Home Affairs has asked the Department of Telecommunication to direct service providers to store call records of customers for at least five years and make them available to law enforcement agencies whenever required.

Citing security concerns, the MHA has conveyed to the DoT that the existing system of keeping call records by the telecom companies for six months has not been able to satisfy the security agencies and hence storing of call details for a longer period was necessary.
 
"We want telecom companies to preserve their call data records for five years so that the security agencies can use that whenever required," a Home Ministry official said.