Keep your Indian phone number active while abroad

An Indian prepaid number cannot be switched off for at least ninety days of silence, and it cannot be switched off at all while more than 20 rupees sits in the account. Those two floors are written by the regulator, not by your carrier, so they hold whichever network you are on. Everything above the floor is the carrier's to decide: how much longer than ninety days it allows, what it sells you to stay topped up, and what your line does the day you land somewhere else.

What does TRAI guarantee, whatever your carrier says?

Three clauses do the work, all in the Telecom Consumers Protection Regulations, and all still current in the version TRAI consolidated in March 2025.

The first sets the floor on silence. Regulation 11 of the consolidated regulations states that "every service provider shall ensure that no cellular mobile telephone connection of a prepaid consumer is deactivated for non-usage, for a minimum period of ninety days or such longer period as may be specified by the service provider". Ninety days is a minimum a carrier may extend, never a maximum it may shorten.

The second turns a small balance into protection. Under regulation 12(1) of the same regulations, "no service provider shall deactivate the cellular mobile telephone connection of a pre-paid consumer for non-usage if an amount exceeding twenty rupees or such lesser amount, as may be specified by the service provider, is available in the account of such consumer". The same clause lets the carrier take a small fee for the privilege: it "may deduct an amount not exceeding twenty rupees, as may be specified by the service provider, from the pre-paid account of the consumer for extension of period of non-usage beyond ninety days". This is the mechanism TRAI calls the Automatic Number Retention Scheme, and it is the reason a balance of a few hundred rupees can carry a number through a long absence without anyone touching the phone.

The third is the safety net after the line is already dead. Regulation 14(1) of the consolidated regulations says a deactivated connection "shall not be allocated to any other consumer till the expiry of a minimum period of fifteen days or such longer period, as may be specified by the service provider, from the date of deactivation and during such period the consumer can get his mobile connection reactivated by making payment of an amount not exceeding twenty rupees".

Read together, they give three dates worth writing down before you fly: the last day you used or recharged the number, that day plus ninety, and that day plus roughly one hundred and five.

What changed in 2025 for Indian SIM card validity, and what did not?

If you have read that TRAI changed the ninety-day rule, the two documents settle it between them. The deactivation floor quoted above is regulation 11, and it reads the same in the version consolidated in March 2025 as it did before. The amendment that ran through the press in early 2025 changed something else.

What did change, with effect from 22 January 2025, is how long a recharge voucher may be sold for. The Telecom Consumers Protection (Twelfth Amendment) Regulations, 2024 raised two separate caps from ninety days to a year, and they belong to two different kinds of voucher, which is where most summaries blur.

For a Special Tariff Voucher, the kind that alters your call, SMS or data allowances, the amendment directs at regulation 3(c)(i) that "in sub-clause (iii) for the words "ninety days", the words "three hundred and sixty-five days" shall be substituted". For a Combo Voucher, the kind that also adds money to your balance, the same document makes the identical substitution one clause earlier, at its regulation 2, inside the definition of a Combo Voucher in the principal regulations. Two caps, two clauses, one effective date.

That is the change that matters if you are leaving for a year. Before it, the longest voucher a carrier could legally sell you ran to about three months, so a year away meant at least four separate recharges from another country. Since January 2025 a single voucher can cover the whole stay.

The same amendment also put a floor under what must be on sale. It inserts a proviso requiring that "the service provider shall offer at least one Special Tariff Voucher exclusively for Voice and SMS with validity period not exceeding three hundred and sixty-five days", which is the plan shape most useful to someone who wants a live number for codes and calls and will not be using Indian mobile data while living elsewhere.

On 22 September 2026 TRAI notified a Thirteenth Amendment extending that idea to shorter durations. We have the press release and not yet the notified text, so the announcement is logged and the details wait until the regulation itself is published.

What is the minimum recharge that keeps an Indian SIM active?

The regulation tells you what the floor costs; your carrier tells you what is actually on the shelf, and those are different questions.

From the floor: a balance above 20 rupees blocks deactivation, the carrier may deduct up to 20 rupees to extend a period of non-usage past ninety days, and reactivation inside the fifteen-day grace window costs no more than 20 rupees. Those ceilings are the regulator's, so no carrier may charge more for those specific things.

What none of this settles is which voucher your carrier sells, at what price, and with what validity. Those numbers move, and they are published on the carrier's own pages rather than in the regulation. Our carrier cards for India are being checked against those pages one at a time, and until a price has been read off the carrier's own page, we leave it blank rather than repeat a figure from a blog.

Will you receive OTP messages on your Indian number while abroad?

Two different things have to be true: the number has to be alive, which is what everything above is about, and it has to be reachable on the network you are standing next to.

On the charging side, Jio's help pages are explicit. Its FAQ on international roaming states that "all incoming text messages are free in international roaming (IR)". Free is a statement about price. Whether your line registers on a foreign network in the first place, and whether that needs a roaming pack switched on before departure, is a separate setting and one that differs by carrier and by account type.

Because it differs, it belongs on the carrier cards and not in a general answer here. If the codes are what brought you, the companion question of which banks will send an OTP to a foreign number at all is covered under bank OTP abroad.

How do you reactivate an Indian SIM that was already deactivated?

Regulation 14(1) buys you at least fifteen days after deactivation before the number can go to someone else, and reactivation in that window is capped at 20 rupees. That window is the part worth acting on immediately.

After it closes, the number may have been returned to the pool, and getting it back stops being a regulatory right and becomes a request to the carrier. Carriers do run reclaim processes for recently released numbers, with their own conditions. That is carrier territory, so it sits on each carrier card rather than here.

Questions people ask

How long can an Indian SIM stay unused before it is deactivated?

At least ninety days, and longer if there is more than 20 rupees on it, because regulation 12 blocks deactivation for non-usage while that balance is there.

Is 20 rupees really enough to keep an Indian number alive?

It is enough to trigger the protection in regulation 12(1), which stops deactivation for non-usage while the balance is above that amount. It is not a promise that nothing else will ever end the line: the account can be drained by the retention deduction the same clause allows, prepaid balances can expire under the plan's own terms, and a number can also be deactivated for reasons that have nothing to do with non-usage, such as failed re-verification. Treat 20 rupees as the floor the regulator guarantees, then look at the carrier card for what your particular plan does on top of it.

Can I keep my Indian number for a whole year without recharging from abroad?

Since 22 January 2025 a single Special Tariff Voucher or Combo Voucher may carry validity of up to 365 days, so one recharge can in principle cover a year. Whether your carrier sells a 365-day voucher, and what it costs, is on its own page and on our carrier card for it.

Will I get bank OTPs on my Indian number while I am overseas?

Only if the line is both active and registered on a network where you are standing. Jio publishes that incoming SMS is free while on international roaming; whether roaming has to be enabled in advance varies, which is why it sits on the carrier cards rather than here.

Where this goes next

Carrier cards for Jio, Airtel, Vi and BSNL are being checked against the carriers' own pages and will appear above as each one is verified. Every page that lands, and every rule that moves, is dated in the rule changes log. If you are weighing whether to hold the number at all, the comparison across countries lives in keep your number abroad.