Home Minister P. Chidambaram has called a meeting of the top executives of telecom service providers offering services in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday to discuss various security-related issues with them.
“Union Home Minister will chair a meeting with Chief Executive Officers or Chief Operating Officers of telecom services providers providing services in Jammu & Kashmir on August 25,” a communique from the Ministry of Home Affairs said.
According to sources, the government will ask telecom companies to stop providing pre-paid services or provide the necessary infrastructure to monitor the communications.
The meeting will be attended by senior executives from various operators, including Bharti Airtel CEO Sanjay Kapoor, Vodafone Essar Cellular Managing Director Sunil Sood and Reliance Communications CEO C.S. Rao.
Telecom Secretary R. Chandrasekhar will also attend the meeting.
In trouble-torn Jammu and Kashmir, there are seven telecom players, including BSNL, Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Idea, Reliance Communications, Tata Indicom and Vodafone, providing post-paid, and pre-paid mobile services in the State.
Jammu and Kashmir has 56.69 lakh mobile subscribers, comprising over 5.6 lakh post-paid and 50 lakh pre-paid users, as per the latest available data.
The State government had earlier banned SMSes following unrest in Kashmir last year.
It, however, revoked the SMS ban on all post-paid connections on December 22, though the blanket ban on SMSes remains in the case of pre-paid services.
The Ministry of Communications had recently extended permission for continuance of pre-paid mobile services in Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and the North-East areas for a period of two years, subject to the condition that the existing security conditions and safeguards already stipulated by the licensor would continue to be adhered to.
It had also said that in no case would pre-paid mobile connections be usable beyond March 31, 2013, on the basis of this permission, without government clearance.
