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| Pre-paid cellphones may soon ring again | | | ET DESK
Jammu, Dec 16: Barely days after Home Secretary visited the winter capital and two weeks before Supreme Court again hears Panthers Party leader Bhim Singh petition, hopes appear to be brightening for resumption of pre-paid cellular service which was suspended with effect from November 1 on security reasons.
After a month and half of categorical no restoration of pre-paid cell phone even as Chief Minister Omar Abdullah also pleaded the case, the Center today adopted a reconciliatory approach as it asked the operators to put in place strong identity verification measures ‘before services could be resumed’.
It may be mentioned here that Jammu and Kashmir has a pre-paid cell phone subscriber base of around 3.8 million which is 95 per cent of the total cell phone users in the state. The arbitrary ban had not only had the users but also thousands of entrepreneurs and other youths in sales and services etc.
The Union Home Secretary GK Pillai today had a meeting in New Delhi with top executives of cellular operators in Jammu and Kashmir and asked them to put in place a foolproof verification process before allowing resumption of pre-paid mobile services in the bordering state. The cellular service operators were asked by government to travel to the state for having discussions with the officials there for fine tuning the procedures in issuing the per-paid service to customers.
The CEOs of various telecom companies, who had come to attend a meeting chaired by Union Home secretary G K Pillai, were told in categorical terms that government had no objection in starting the services if a foolproof verification process was ensured by them, official sources said.
The meeting remained inconclusive as no decision could be taken on resumption of pre-paid mobile services and some more rounds of meeting will take place with cellular operators to sort out the problem, the sources said.
Representatives of BSNL, Tata Teleservices, Reliance Telecom, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Aircel participated in the meeting as these companies offer mobile services in the state.
The meeting also took note of the new security features and verification obligations which ensure foolproof security in prepaid mobile services.
Amid security concerns, the Centre had in October banned prepaid mobile phone connections in the state, sparking widespread protests.
The Supreme Court also today granted two weeks to the Centre and Jammu and Kashmir government to respond to a petition challenging the ban on pre-paid mobile phone services in the state.
The apex court had on November 16 issued notices to the ministries of Home and Telecom and the state government asking them to respond within two weeks about security concerns and economic issues raised in the PIL filed by the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party.
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