A temple that sends booking confirmations, seva (offerings performed for devotees) reminders or festival invitations by SMS is, in the regulator’s eyes, sending commercial communication — even though nothing is being sold. Under the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 (TCCCPR), those messages travel only if the sender, the sender ID and the message text are registered on the DLT platforms run by the telecom operators. This guide explains the steps and the rules that trip temples up. It follows the regulations as amended in February 2025, using TRAI’s consolidated text of May 2026.
What DLT is, in one paragraph
DLT stands for distributed ledger technology. Under TCCCPR, the operators keep shared registers of senders (entities), headers, content templates, consents and customer preferences, and check commercial messages against them before delivery. As the sender, the temple is the principal entity. The SMS provider or software that transmits your messages is a telemarketer in the regulation’s language, and the regulations require that messages be traceable from sender to recipient through each entity in that chain.
The four message categories
Every header and template carries a category. The February 2025 amendment redefined the categories and requires the header seen by the recipient to identify the type, with the suffix -P, -S, -T or -G.
| Category | What TRAI’s definition covers | Temple examples |
|---|---|---|
| Transactional (-T) | Sent in response to a customer-initiated transaction, within 30 minutes of it — such as an OTP or a payment confirmation. Not promotional. | OTP for devotee login; “₹1,100 received, thank you” sent the moment an online donation succeeds |
| Service (-S) | Information to an existing customer about a product or service they use, not promotional and not needing explicit consent; or messages to complete a transaction after explicit consent | Confirmation of next week’s seva; a room booking reminder; a receipt link sent later |
| Promotional (-P) | Promotional material or advertisement. Must carry an opt-out in the same message. Any message that mixes promotional content into a transactional or service message is treated as promotional. | Utsav (festival) invitations, appeals for the annadanam (free community meals) fund, announcements of new sevas |
| Government (-G) | Messages sent by government | Rarely relevant to a trust; if your temple is administered by a government department, ask your operator which category applies |
The category decides who receives the message. Promotional messages are delivered only to people who have not blocked that category in their preferences — unless the temple holds their explicit digital consent. When in doubt, treat appeals and invitations as promotional: a header used to send mislabelled content can be blacklisted, and the regulations suspend a sender’s traffic when a header is blacklisted.
Step by step
- Register the trust as a principal entity on a telecom operator’s DLT portal — Jio, Airtel, Vi and BSNL each run one. Register in the trust’s legal name, with its PAN, proof of registration and an authorised signatory. Since the 2025 amendment, operators’ registration of senders includes physical verification of the entity, biometric authentication of the authorised person and linking the entity to a unique mobile number. Fees and document lists vary by portal. You receive an entity ID used in every later step.
- Apply for headers. A header is the sender name, of up to 11 characters, that appears on the recipient’s phone — usually a short form of the temple’s name. Ask for few, recognisable headers; operators now scrutinise header requests more closely, taking into account how many headers a sender already holds.
- Register content templates. Submit the exact text of each message with its variable parts marked, its category, and the header it will be sent under.
- Whitelist links and call-back numbers. Messages containing URLs, app links or call-back numbers are checked against whitelisted data uploaded by the sender, with an undertaking that the links are not malicious. Register your website and payment-link domains before you use them in any template.
- Declare your telemarketer chain. Link your entity to the SMS provider or software that sends for you, as your operator’s portal requires, so each message can be traced.
- Set up consent if you send promotional messages to people who may have blocked them. Consent-seeking messages go out from the operators’ consent short code (127xxx), and must name the temple and the scope of consent clearly.
- Load the IDs into your SMS software and send test messages to staff phones on each operator before going live.
Template rules that cause rejections
- Write the message, not a description of it. The template is the exact text, with only the changing parts — name, date, amount — as variables.
- Up to three variables as standard. More are allowed only in special circumstances, with justification approved by the operator; each variable must then be pre-tagged for its purpose, and at least 30% of the template must be fixed text.
- Keep variables short. The rules work with a 30-character limit per variable; using several contiguous variables of the same type to get around it needs justification.
- One template, one header. A content template may not be linked to more than one header.
- Match the category to the content. A booking confirmation that ends “Donate for Navaratri!” is promotional.
- Use it or lose it. Headers and templates unused for 90 days are deactivated automatically, and reactivated on request.
A service template that should pass:
Dear {#var#}, your Rudrabhishek seva at Shri Ganesh Mandir is confirmed for {#var#}. Receipt no. {#var#}. – Shri Ganesh Mandir Trust
Consent and opt-out
- Every promotional message must give the recipient a way to opt out, in the same message.
- A person who revokes consent may opt in again on their own, but the sender may seek their consent again only after 90 days.
- The confirmation sent when consent is recorded must also tell the person how to revoke it.
- Keep your own opt-out list as well, and honour STOP replies on every channel, not just SMS.
WhatsApp: template approval basics
WhatsApp messages are not registered on DLT, but Meta has its own rules for businesses:
- Get opt-in first. Meta’s policy requires that the business clearly states the person is opting in to receive its messages, and names the business — for example, a checkbox on the booking form reading “Send my booking updates from Shri Ganesh Mandir Trust on WhatsApp”.
- Use approved templates to start conversations. Outside a customer service window, only pre-approved template messages can be sent. Templates are categorised as marketing, utility or authentication, and the category also affects pricing.
- Reply freely within 24 hours. When a devotee messages the temple, a 24-hour customer service window opens in which free-form replies are allowed; each new message from them restarts it.
- Allow for review. Templates must be approved before use; WhatsApp Manager notes that review can take up to 24 hours.
Give devotees a clear way to stop WhatsApp messages too, and keep marketing and utility templates apart — a seva reminder should not carry a fund-raising appeal.
Pre-launch checklist
- Entity registered in the trust’s legal name, and the entity ID noted.
- Headers approved — as few as you need.
- A template approved for each message the office actually sends, in the right category.
- Website and payment domains whitelisted.
- Telemarketer chain declared for your SMS provider.
- Opt-out wording in every promotional template.
- WhatsApp opt-in captured on every form that collects a phone number.
- Test messages received on Jio, Airtel, Vi and BSNL numbers.
How Vani fits
Vani is our messaging platform for SMS, WhatsApp and email. It stores your DLT entities, headers and 19-digit template IDs, compares the registered template text character for character with the rendered message before it goes live, and shows approval status per operator — Jio, Airtel, Vi and BSNL — with DLT import and export. For WhatsApp it has a template builder that submits templates to Meta and syncs their approval status, and it handles STOP replies and inbound messages. Devotee lists are de-duplicated on contact and name, so family members who share one phone stay separate, and suppression lists and consent records are kept per contact. SMS is routed across AWS, Karix and TrustSignal with automatic failover.
What it does not do: Vani does not register your temple on DLT. The entity, headers and templates are registered in the trust’s own name on the operator’s portal; Vani then uses and checks them. Pricing is pay-per-message from a prepaid wallet, with no published rate card, and access is by request.
Sources
- Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018 — consolidated text, TRAI (21 May 2026)
- TCCCPR (Second Amendment) Regulations, 2025 — TRAI notification of 12 February 2025
- TCCCPR overview — TRAI
- WhatsApp message templates — Meta for Developers
- Sending messages and the customer service window — Meta for Developers
- Getting opt-in for WhatsApp — Meta for Developers
