These Are the 300 Websites That Can Be Accessed By People in J&K

The list includes websites categorised as news, entertainment, utilities and search engine among others.

Image used for representational purposes.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Fro, 25 January onwards, the government will be restoring 2G mobile internet services in all 20 districts of Jammu and Kashmir, according to a notification by the Union Territory’s home department.

The order also says “data services shall be available on post-paid as well as pre-paid sim cards. However, access shall be limited to the 301 ‘whitelisted’ sites.”

Till now, there wasn’t a lot of clarity about which websites will be made available on the internet to the people in J&K. All we could tell was that social media applications were excluded from the list and only a slew of search engine platforms, and websites related to the banking, education, news, travel, utilities and employment sector were opened for access.

But we’ve finally managed to get hold of the full list of websites that have been whitelisted, courtesy this Indian Express report.

As you go through the list given here, people in the J&K region will finally able to access platforms like Spotify, Amazon Prime Video for content streaming, while they can access websites which let them order medicines. In addition to this, news platforms will also be available in the region, and the list of 301 websites includes the likes of NDTV, NYTimes, Aljazeera and even The Quint among others.

However, the list terms websites like Apple.com as a search engine, which is rather strange, and same goes for Chrome, which is more of a web browser from which one can access websites like NDTV or Spotify.

Internet and mobile connectivity in the region were restricted from 5 August 2019 after the Centre announced the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the erstwhile state into two Union Territories: Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir.

While most of the services except mobile internet were restored in Jammu within a week, Kashmir has been witnessing restoration of landlines and postpaid mobile services and internet facilities for essential services like hospitals in phases.

On 10 January, the Supreme Court passed an order in which it had asked the relevant authorities to review all the communications restrictions on a regular basis and publish all orders regarding any such restrictions.