Srinagar: Postpaid mobile services, which were slated to resume on Saturday in Kashmir, are likely to begin from Monday, a major step towards easing curbs in the state, officials said.
Restrictions were imposed 69 days ago after the Centre abrogated Jammu and Kashmir's special status.
Rohit Kansal, principal secretary said, "All post-paid mobile connections in Kashmir will be restored from Monday 12 noon."
Reacting to the development, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's daughter hit out at the Centre calling the restoration of postpaid mobile phone services as "taking half-hearted steps" to stave off "international pressure".
Kashmir’s been under an inhuman lockdown for over 2 months now. Yet state admins taking half hearted steps just to stave off international pressure such as restoring only post paid mobiles. How many post paid mobiles will even be working since bills haven’t been paid since Aug?— Mehbooba Mufti (@MehboobaMufti) October 12, 2019
The administration has been examining various options with regard to suspension of mobile phone services which have come in for severe criticism for causing hardships to about 7 million residents of the Valley.
At one point, it was planned to open only BSNL services followed by allowing activating only incoming calls run by private telecom operators.
However, it has now been decided to go the whole hog by allowing operationalisation of all postpaid phones run by all operators and numbering around 40 lakh subscriber. This will leave out about 26 lakh prepaid mobile subscribers.
The services were likely to be resumed Saturday but a last minute technical hitch led to postponing of the resumption of services.
The subscribers will have to, however, wait for some more time for the Internet services to resume in the valley, they said.
The move comes barely days after the Centre issued an advisory opening the valley for tourists. Travel association bodies had approached the administration, saying that no tourist would like to come to the valley where no mobile phones working.
The mobile services in Jammu and Kashmir were shut down on August 5 after the Centre announced in New Delhi the abrogation of the special status guaranteed to the state under Article 370 of the Constitution.
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.
Restrictions seem to be easing as the move to restore communication on postpaid numbers comes after the Jammu & Kashmir administration allowed a 15-member delegation from Jammu to visit National Conference leaders who were placed under house arrest.
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