Jammu And Kashmir: 70 Days Later, Postpaid Mobile Services To Be Restored From Today

After over two months of communication blockade in Jammu and Kashmir, the postpaid mobile services are set to resume from Monday afternoon. The Valley has nearly 66 lakh mobile subscribers out of which nearly 40 lakh subscribers have post-paid facilities. Tensions are high in Kashmir after New Delhi on August 5 announced abrogation of provisions of Article 370 and decided to bifurcate the state into Union territories - Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh - hours after Kashmir was placed under a total clampdown.

"Mobile phone connections, to be specific, all postpaid mobile phone connections, irrespective of service provider, will resume from Monday - October 14th at noon. This will happen across the state, in all 10 districts of Kashmir," Jammu and Kashmir Principal Secretary Rohit Kansal said at a news briefing.

Partial fixed line telephony was resumed in the valley on August 17, and by September 4 all landlines, numbering nearly 50,000, were declared operational.

In Jammu, the communication system was restored within days of the blockade and even mobile Internet was started around mid-August. However, after its misuse, the Internet facility on cellular phones was snapped on August 18.

On Friday, the state administration came out with a full-page advertisement in a local daily urging people to resume normal activities. 

The advertisement in a local daily Greater Kashmir on Friday stated: “Are we going to succumb to militants? Think!!! For over 70 years now, the people of J&K have been misled. They have been victims of a vicious campaign and motivated propaganda that has kept them trapped in an endless cycle of terrorism, violence, destruction and poverty.”

“While separatists sent their children to exotic lands to study, work and earn, they instigated the common people to push their children into violence, stone-pelting and hartals. They used threats of terrorists, coercion and misinformation to beguile the people. Today, militants are using the same tactic of threats and coercion. Are we going to tolerate this?” it stated.