Mobile internet services resumed in Assam on Friday, ten days after it was snapped in the wake of violent protests over the the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) .
A senior official of private telecom operator Airtel said the ban was lifted from 9 am on Friday.
“As we did not received any fresh order to continue with the blackout, we have lifted the ban from 9 am,” he said.
The State government had said that mobile internet services in the state would be restored from Friday though the Gauhati High Court had ordered restoration of the service by 5 pm on Thursday.
Broadband services have already resumed in Assam.
On Thursday, the Gauhati High Court had directed the Assam government to restore mobile internet service by 5 pm.
A division bench of Justices Manojit Bhuyan and Saumitra Saikia gave the direction after hearing four PILs filed by journalist Ajit Kumar Bhuyan, and advocates Bonoshri Gogoi, Randeep Sharma and Debakanta Doley.
With resumption of mobile internet, hundreds of WhatsApp messages and social media notifications clogged the cell phones of users.
“With messages flooding my phone, it hanged several times. I had to restart it many times,” an avid user of social media platforms on mobile phone said.
Assam witnessed one of the worst violent protests in its history with three rail stations, post office, bank, bus terminus, shops, dozens of vehicles and many other public properties being set ablaze or totally damaged.
Already five persons lost their lives in the violence that broke out in the state last week.
After the Rajya Sabha passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill last week, the state erupted in uncontrolled protests, in which agitators engaged in pitch battle in almost every major city or town, forcing the administration to impose curfew.
Several towns and cities were placed under indefinite curfew, including Guwahati, the epicentre of protests, besides Dibrugarh, Tezpur and Dhekiajuli.
Night curfew was imposed in Jorhat, Golaghat, Tinsukia and Charaideo districts.
With the situation returning to normalcy, curfew has been lifted from several cities and relaxed in the rest.
