Ban on social media sites lifted

The Jammu and Kashmir government on Friday evening revoked a month-long ban on 22 social media sites and applications, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

Principal Secretary R K Goyal confirmed the ban has not been extended, and that social media networks will function as usual.

The state government, while invoking powers conferred on it under the Indian Telegraph Act and Information Technology Act, had on April 26 banned 22 sites in an attempt to curb street protests in the Valley.

The state home department, in its order, had said the sites were being “misused by anti-national and anti-social elements to create law and order disturbances”.

VPN use

However, the ban had very little effect as users accessed the sites through virtual private networks (VPN). VPN masks a user’s location and lets them access websites banned in a particular area.

“People were using VPNs and that made it difficult for us to control the misuse of the Internet,” a senior police officer said. The Internet is often suspended or restricted in the state to quell violent protests.

According to a report by the Software Freedom Law Centre, Internet was blocked in Kashmir 31 times between 2012 and 2016. However, this was the first time the authorities placed a complete ban on social networking sites.

The ban faced widespread criticism from UN experts on May 11, who urged the Centre to withdraw the ban and reinstate freedom of speech.

Terming the ban archaic, the main Opposition National Conference had accused the government of meting out “collective punishment to the people of Kashmir for expressing their political aspirations and raising their voice against gross human rights excesses”.