[ Indu Chukhu ]
ITANAGAR, 12 Aug: While the Arunachal government has been showcasing e- governance and everything to do with internet, its first step in the face of law and order situation is to shut down the internet. Shutting down internet has become a norm in Arunachal disrupting bussiness including working of the newspapers and other media, so much so that, apart from during bandhs, the administration shuts down the internet whenever there is a competitive examination.
The latest was the shutting down of internet in Itanagar Capital Region ahead of the 36-hour capital bandh, which was subsequently called off after intervention by the Nyishi Elite Society.
While the bandh was called off at around 8:30 pm, the govt went ahead with the internet shutdown between 10 pm to 1 am.
A notification was issued by the home department on 11 August to the telecom service providers and the telecommunications department for temporary suspension of internet connections in the ICR and Papum Pare (rural) districts from 6 pm onwards on Sunday until 5 pm on 13 August. The home secretary in the order mentioned that the shutdown was to prevent occurrence of serious law and order problems, threats to human life and destruction of property during the proposed 36-hour bandh called by the All Nyishi Students’ Union from Monday morning to Tuesday evening. It mentioned that all leased lines of the telecom service providers and the internet service providers would be suspended temporarily “in the interest of public emergency and safety.”
Later, another notification was issued by the home department on Sunday night, reportedly after the announcement of the deferment of the bandh call by the ANSU.
In some localities of Itanagar, residents suffered the brunt of the internet shutdown for about three hours or more. In Abotani Colony, the fibre internet connections, such as BSNL and Jio, were not working from 9:30 pm until around 12:00 to 12:30 am, and in A-B Sector of the Raj Bhavan area, the internet services stopped working from 6 to 7 pm, and were restored after 10 pm, according to internet users residing in the locality.
BSNL Itanagar Office Sub-Divisional Engineer Karma Tsering informed this daily that the internet connection for all BSNL services was closed down
at 8:30 pm and resumed at 11 pm. He said that the order was received at around 7-7:30 pm. Tsering also informed that it takes around half-an-hour to an hour to either connect or disconnect the system as their data centres are situated in different states.
The order from the home secretary excluded more than 30 phone numbers from the internet outage and all leased lines of telecom service providers and internet service providers.
