Days after the Jammu and Kashmir government said that it would allow 2G post paid mobile users to access only "white-listed" websites, the administration released a list of 153 websites that have been whitelisted in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. This direction came into effect on January 18, and shall remain in force until January 24. We have reached out to UT's Home Department, and Information and Public Relations Department to learn what will happen after January 24. The list of the websites was shared by several people on Twitter, and The Wire first reported on the order. White-listed websites include Netflix, Gmail, Paytm: Divided into 10 sections, the list of white-listed websites includes 4 email services, including Gmail and Outlook, 15 banking websites, including RBI and J&K Bank, 38 educational websites including Unacademy, Byju’s and Wikipedia, 11 entertainment websites such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar and 42 utilities websites including Paytm, Zomato, Jio Chat, Amazon and Flipkart. Other white-listed websites include 4 automakers’ websites, 20 travel websites and 13 services websites including the passport office website and income tax filing site. Notably, mainstream news websites have not been added to the list of white-listed websites. Although, as The Wire report pointed out, Hotstar does allow users to stream a handful of news channels, and moneycontrol.com also reports on business news. However, the order has categorised moneycontrol.com as a banking website, and not as a business news portal. Similarly, a few news channels can be streamed via Airtel…
