New Year Bonanza for J&K: Assuring safety, Centre restores SMS, internet services for all and Govt hospitals

Srinagar, January 1: Having a quick scan on normalcy and committing to the safety of people in Jammu and Kashmir, the government has restored SMS facility for all mobile phones and broadband internet services in government-run-hospitals. The internet in J&K was resumed after over four-and-a-half months of suspension. Internet services, landline and mobile phones were snapped across Jammu and Kashmir on August 4, a day before the Centre's announcement to scrap the special status of Jammu and Kashmir aligning it with rest of India making two Union Territories.

 

Though most services, except mobile internet, were restored in Jammu within a week, Kashmir saw landlines and post-paid services being restored in phases. Addressing the media, Jammu and Kashmir administration spokesperson Rohit Kansal said that it has been decided to restore internet connectivity to all government hospitals with effect from midnight of December 31 besides fully restoring SMS on mobile phones.

On December 10, he had said machine-based SMS were enabled for mobile phones in Kashmir in order to facilitate students, scholarship aspirants, traders and others, and that restoration of full message services was part of the process. "Continuous efforts of the government have been to facilitate and move forward as much as possible and as quickly as possible, and ever since August 5, we have been progressing in this direction both in Jammu and in Kashmir. We have been moving progressively forward and we will try to ensure as much and as quickly as possible," Kansal said in response to a question about the restoration of Internet services.

On August 5, the Centre had abrogated Article 370 provisions that gave special status to J-K and bifurcated the erstwhile state into UTs of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.