New Delhi: In an unprecedented clampdown, internet services were suspended across major cities in Uttar Pradesh and a few sensitive ones in West Bengal and Karnataka as central and state governments doubled down on efforts to check the spread of rage against the new citizenship law.
Internet access over mobile phones was suspended in major towns in Uttar Pradesh, including Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad, Agra, Aligarh, Ghaziabad, Varanasi, Mathura, Meerut, Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar, Bareli, Firozadad, Pilibhit, Rampur, Saharanpur, Shamli, Sambhal, Amroha, Mau, Azamgarh and Sultanpur following explicit state government orders, telecom industry officials said.
Broadband internet services were also suspended in some cities, including Lucknow and Ghaziabad.
The Uttar Pradesh government's Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi in an order issued on December 19 stated that "messaging systems like SMS and WhatsApp and social media systems like Facebook and YouTube may be used extensively for the transmission of information like pictures, videos and texts that have the potential to inflame passions and thus exacerbate the law and order situation."
"Therefore, in order to prevent the possible misuse" of messaging platforms and internet "to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the city and create further law and order situation and in order that normalcy may maintain" temporary suspension of SMS messages and mobile internet/data services of all telecom service providers is ordered for next 45 hours beginning 1500 hours on December 19, he said.
In West Bengal, a similar clampdown resulted in the shutdown of mobile internet in Malda, Murshidabad, Howrah, Barasat, North Dinajpur, Baruipur, Canning and Nadia.
In Karnataka, internet services were suspended in the Dakshina Kannada district of Mangalore city.
Internet connections were cut in parts of the national capital on Thursday with all three major service providers Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio following the government instruction.