Within 24 hours of Central Govt making its intention clear and asking Jammu and Kashmir Govt to activate the shutdown telecom towers under militants’ threat is somewhat baffling. Over 1,000 towers have been activated. One fails to understand the urgency of closing down the telecom operations and the same urgency shown to restore the services. Few days back Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had said that the service would be restored within few days when the closure was going on. The mobile services came to the state in 2002 during the PDP’s first stint and today threat to close down too comes during the party’s rule. The two stints of National Conference- Congress rule never saw such threat to the telecom business and nor was any selective attack like the one being faced now. One cannot brush aside such incidents as created by some miscreants. The reality could be different. Had it been some selective incident there would never have been a mass appeal to telcos to remove their communication towers. Most of the Valley-based newspapers are carrying such appeals by the house owners. Communication is one of the major factor for development and with the advent of mobile telephone connectivity has become much faster from any corner of the country and world for any one including militants, thus making identification of their location much easier for security agencies who have been tracking their movement. With the present diktat the militants have shown their desperation to scuttle such moves as they are finding it difficult to maintain communication links. But what is surprising is that throughout the situation the State Government had maintained a stoic silence. A senior minister was quick to react on Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s statement that “terrorists have to be neutralised through terrorists” sparking the controversy. The minister quoted a Supreme Court directive that arms cannot be given to civilians to kill and anybody doing so will be an abettor of the offence under Section 302 of IPC. Now what an ordinary man should construe from such statement or should he ignore such incidents. Well one thing is clear after a lull once again militancy is being revived through a new route that is dominating the communication space. This could be the new tactics of militants and their masters sitting across the borders.
