Communication Gag Freezes Kashmir Based News Portals

Kashmir based news portals are in off-line mode since August 5 when the Government of India imposed communication clampdown after scrapping the state’s special status, carving it up into two Union Territories and revoking Article 35A, which gave Jammu and Kashmir the power to define permanent residents and grant specific rights, including the right to own land.
Scores of websites from Kashmir have last been updated in the early hours of August 5 and to date these portals have frozen in time. Even newspapers in Kashmir are not able to update their websites.
Shahid Imran who operates ‘Kashmir Crown’ said that he suffered huge losses due to communication clampdown. I have to shut my two offices in North Kashmir and cut the salaries of several employees. I was not expecting a lockdown of this magnitude. This time it was a disaster for all and Journalists suffered heavily,” he said.
There is a media facilitation center that was actually set up by the Department of Information and Public Relations for non-local TV Journalists who thronged Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370. These Journalists availed internet facility there but local Journalists also started visiting it after the departure of non-local Journalists and since then the media facilitation center has become a meeting point for all the local Journalists-working both for local and international media outlets.
“You don’t get enough time to update your website at this Centre and if you will do, it will naturally send a wrong signal. When the internet is shut across Kashmir, how can we update our website for non-local subscribers who would feel that there is no communication blockade in Kashmir and everything is normal?