Telecom providers Bharti Airtel and Vodafone informed on Thursday that they had received instructions from the government to suspend voice, internet and SMS services in parts of Delhi. The measure appears linked to curbing of protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which are ongoing in Delhi.
Economic Times reported "The [Airtel] suspension started after 10am and the telco representative said that they can't provide any clarity on the duration of services suspension."
Social media users claimed Airtel services had been affected in areas such as northeast Delhi and South and Central Delhi and the vicinity of India Gate. Seelampur, where violence occurred on Tuesday, is located in northeast Delhi.
In response to queries from journalists, Airtel tweeted, “We are complying with instructions received from govt. authorities on suspending, voice, SMS and data in certain areas in Delhi. Once the suspension orders are lifted, our services will be fully up and running. We are sorry about the inconvenience.”
Vodafone also tweeted to queries that “there is a planned outage scheduled as per government directive. This will rectified as soon we receive the next directive from the authority” and “As per the directive received from the Government, data services are stopped at few locations. As a result of this, you are not able to use the data services”.
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The restrictions on mobile services appear linked to government plans to limit the possibility of protests, which were allegedly being orchestrated via WhatsApp.
ANI reported on Thursday, “There were few protests in Delhi in past 24 hours, which were organised by mobilising people through WhatsApp groups, but no organisation has come up to take responsibility of protest. Few locations identified where officers have asked to provide local intelligence frequently.”