Srinagar: Post-paid mobile services in Kashmir are expected to return from Saturday, 68 days after they were shut down following the Centre's decision to abrogate Jammu and Kashmir's special status, officials said here Friday.
They made it clear that the subscribers will have to wait for some more time for the Internet services to resume in the valley.
The officials said a decision had been taken that post-paid mobile services will be resumed in the beginning and the pre-paid services will be resumed later. They have also stressed that proper verification of customer be undertaken for post-paid mobile services.
The valley has nearly 66 lakh mobile subscribers out of which almost 40 lakh subscribers have post-paid facilities.
The move comes barely two days after the Centre issued an advisory opening the valley for tourists.
Travel association bodies had approached the administration, saying that no tourist would like to come to the valley where no mobile phones were working.
Meanwhile, as the shutdown over abrogation of Article 370 provisions continued for the 68th day, the Jammu and Kashmir administration has come out with a full-page advertisement in local dailies asking people not to be afraid of militant threats and resume their normal activities.
"Are we going to succumb to militants? For over 70 years now, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have been misled. They have been victims of a vicious campaign and motivated propaganda that has kept them trapped in an endless cycle of terrorism, violence, destruction and poverty," the advertisement, published in various dailies of Kashmir, reads.
The Kashmir valley has been witnessing continuous shutdown since August 5 when the Centre revoked the state's special status under Article 370 and bifurcated it into two Union Territories.
In the ad, the government highlighted how the separatists sent their children to "exotic lands" to study, work and earn while instigating the common people to push their children into "violence, stone-pelting and hartals".