SMS Ban in India's Jammu to Continue

The ongoing ban on SMSs in India's Jammu region is to continue after the Supreme Court upheld the local government decision to impose the ban in the first place. The region has been hit by communal violence since an attempt was made to donate land to Hindus around the Amarnath Shrine. In one protest, six people were killed and 100 injured when police fired into a crowd in Srinagar protesting the transfer of forested land.

The regional government argued that the violence is being fueled by malicious and incorrect messages being forward around by SMS and imposed a blanket ban on the mobile networks providing text message services.

The High Court had ruled on Monday that the ban was illegal following a complaint from the Bar Association of Jammu, but the  J&K government appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which yesterday sided with the government.

The Amarnath caves are one of the most famous shrines in Hinduism, dedicated to the god Shiva, located in the (Pakistan claimed) Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The shrine is claimed to be over 5,000 years old and forms an important part of ancient Hindu mythology.

The government had also directed two local TV stations to stop beaming “provocative and inflammatory content" but lifted the ban when the two stations agreed to self-censor their content.

Posted to the site on 6th August 2008