J&K police goes for damage control, restores 963 mobile towers out of 1,220 in valley

SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir police claims to have restored 963 mobile towers out of the total 1,220 towers affected across the Kashmir valley till Tuesday evening. As of now, police claims 2,734 towers out of total 2991 towers across 13 districts of Kashmir, are functional.

However, Sopore town in north Kashmir continues to remain hit as 86 towers out of the exact 177 in the area are yet to be restored. Bandipora district also remains hit with 38 towers yet to be restored out of 122 in the area.

The threats issued by an unknown outfit Lashkar-e-Islami and subsequent killings of people associated with telecom business by unidentified gunmen in north Kashmir has crippled the telecommunication service in north and some parts of central Kashmir.

"We have restored communication completely in south and central Kashmir. 70% of towers are functional in north Kashmir as well," director-general of police, K Rajendra told ET. The police is in process of tracing two people involved in throwing an explosive device at mobile tower in Srinagar, he said.

Due to the threats, attacks and killings mobile tower operators have stopped operations on their own. Besides, contractors responsible for fuel supply for running towers hve also stopped functioning. The fear psychosis is something that even telecom companies have not been able to control. The land lords on whose premises towers were installed have also closed the premises and have not permitted any activity citing security reasons.

The blast has triggered panic in the state capital, which is expecting huge tourist arrival in the coming months. Many private telecom operators had shut down the towers and communication was affected for two days in Srinagar as well. The official data reveals that 141 towers out of the total, 714 towers installed in Srinagar have been affected. On Tuesday evening, only seven towers were to be restored in Srinagar.

Similarly in Baramullah, Handwara and Kupwara, more than 20 towers in each district are yet to be restored. As of now, police was yet to restore services at around 257 towers across Kashmir. Private telecom operators, including, Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel, Idea and Reliance, who are incurring huge losses, due to the disruption, have remained silent over the issue. They termed it as law and order issue, which will be dealt by the state.