New Delhi/Jammu, April 16
Hours after the Department of Telecommunication on Friday directed 12 mobile service providers, including the state-owned BSNL, to withdraw SMS facility from all post-paid subscribers in Jammu & Kashmir, the notification was withdrawn following intervention by the Union Home Ministry.

Citing security concerns, the DoT had not only imposed a total SMS ban on post-paid connections, it had inexplicably ordered service providers to restrict pre-paid users to 10 SMSes per day per subscriber. The state, which has a population of 1.20 crore has 55 lakh mobile subscribers, both in the pre-paid and post-paid categories.

An infuriated J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the “direction defies logic” and demanded its immediate withdrawal. “An officer sitting in the Department of Telecommunication or the Home Ministry cannot decide what is right or what is wrong for the people of my state,” said the CM.

“Why Jammu and Kashmir has been singled out when no such ban has been imposed in the region where 76 CRPF personnel were killed,” said Omar angrily. The DoT notification stated that the ban would come into effect from midnight April 16 ‘in national interest’ and ‘due to security reasons’. But sources in the Army, BSF and CRPF in J & K denied making any such submission to the Centre at any time.

The CM provided a plausible explanation and said that he had indeed sought a ban on bulk SMS facility, which are being used to “spread rumours and gossip in the name of news”. The request, in all probability, was misunderstood by the babus.

Ironically, the Chief Minister’s brother-in-law Sachin Pilot is the Union Minister of State for Telecommunication. But the left arm of the government evidently is not aware of what the right arm is doing since the Home Ministry officials also confided that they favoured a ban on bulk SMS as this was being used in the state to gather trouble makers within minutes or staging protests even for minor issues.

Even more significantly, the bulk SMS facility is primarily being provided by the state-owned BSNL and scores of unregistered news agencies, which have mushroomed in the state, have been using the facility and sending out sensational, unconfirmed or provocative information.