Within hours of banning the SMS service for post-paid subscribers and restricting the facility for pre-paid users in J&K, the Centre on Friday withdrew its order following a strong protest by the state which charged the telecom and the home ministries with �goofing-up� on the entire issue due to poor understanding of the matter.
Earlier in the day, citing security reasons, the telecom ministry had asked service providers in J&K to ban SMS for post-paid subscribers and restrict the facility to 10 messages per day per pre-paid subscriber with effect from Friday midnight.
State chief minister Omar Abdullah, however, immediately lodged a protest with the Union home ministry, which, in turn, asked the telecom ministry to withdraw its order.
It is now learnt that the telecom ministry will come out with a fresh directive on the SMS service in due course. This will be done only after a thorough discussion of the issue among officials of the state government and the telecom and home ministries. �The fresh order may not touch individual subscribers who send �single� or very limited number of �bulk� text messages per day,� said a home ministry official.
The �goof-up� during the day was made as the telecom ministry issued the ban order in the case of both �single� as well as �bulk� text messages, allegedly ignoring the state�s concern which had asked for banning of only �bulk� SMSes due to security reasons.
The state�s concern regarding �bulk� messages was even endorsed by the home ministry, which had found that the service was increasingly being misused by unscrupulous elements to spread rumours and to mobilize a large number of people at short notice.