Network outages amid flood-like situation add to people's woes in Jammu and Kashmir; CM echoes concern

Srinagar: The breakdown of telecom services in Jammu and Kashmir for the second day on Wednesday added to the miseries of people reeling under an alarming flood-like situation owing to heavy rain since Sunday.

Acknowledging the gravity of the situation, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said he too felt disconnected amid the telecom breakdown.

"Still struggling with almost non-existent communication. There is a trickle of data flowing on Jio mobile but no fixed line WiFi, no browsing, almost no apps, things like X open frustratingly slowly, WhatsApp struggles with anything more than short text messages. Haven’t felt this disconnected since the terrible days of 2014 and 2019," he said in a post on X.

Abdullah lost power in the 2014 Assembly elections and was placed under the Public Safety Act for months together in the wake of the abrogation of Article 370 granting special status to the erstwhile state of J-K in August 2019.

Jammu and Kashmir experienced network outages in all the service providers on Tuesday after widespread damage to optical fibres at various sites amid torrential rain, which created havoc in most places, especially in the Jammu region.

The communication blackout impeded emergency response measures and caused panic among the residents.

The telecom operators said technical teams have been deployed to restore services as soon as possible.

In a late-night development on Tuesday, the Centre asked all the telecom service providers to immediately activate the intra-circle roaming (ICR) facility in J-K till September 2.

The directive has been passed to the regulatory heads of Bharti Airtel, BSNL, Reliance-Jio and Vodafone-ldea.

"In view of the prevailing situations due to heavy rainfall and multiple landslides in Jammu and Kashmir, and in accordance with Clause 29.6 of the unified licence and as per the provisions of SOP 2020 for responding to disasters, all telecom service providers are hereby instructed to activate the intra-circle roaming facility for the J-K Union Territory with immediate effect till 23:59 hours of September 2, or till further instructions, whichever is earlier," the disaster management unit of the Department of Telecommunications said in its order.

It said the ICR facility will continue to be extended to all in-roamers in J-K and this may be treated on top priority.

With waterlogging reported from the low-lying areas and mobile networks down for the second day, people complained of mounting difficulties in reaching out to the emergency service providers, contacting their families, and accessing timely updates on the evolving situation.