Citizenship Act protests: Internet, telecom services suspended in parts of Delhi

New Delhi: The national capital of India gets the same treatment as Kashmir on Thursday. Government authorities have suspended mobile services including internet, calling and SMS in different parts of Delhi. This decision follows massive protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which has taken the nation by storm.

“The affected areas are walled city area of north and central districts, Mandi House, Seelampur, Jaffrabad, Mustafabad, Jamia Nagar and Shaheen Bagh, and Bawana,” said a top telecom official. “We have received instructions from government authorities to suspend mobile services in these locations.”

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and Reliance Jio suspended their mobile services following the government directive. The suspension of Airtel’s services started after 10 am, and their telecom representatives said that they couldn’t provide any clarity on the duration of this suspension.

“Voice, internet, and SMS services are currently suspended in your location as per instructions from the government authorities. Once the authorities lift the suspension orders, our services will be fully up and running,” an Airtel customer care executive said.

Vodafone-Idea also shut down voice, data and SMS from 9 am to 1 pm in some parts of the city. “There is a planned outage scheduled as per government directive. It will be rectified as soon as we receive the next directive from the authority,” Vodafone tweeted in response to a query on the outage.

An official release from the Deputy Commissioner of Delhi Police Special Cell read, “In the view of prevailing law and order situation in Delhi, it is now directed that communication of all types, i.e. voice, SMS and internet, be halted from 9 am to 1 pm on December 19, 2019.”

As per the release, the area includes the Walled City areas of North and Central districts, Mandi House, Seelampur, Jaffrabad, Mustafabad, Jamia Nagar and Shaheen Bagh and Bawana.