The blackout

The scale

It was, at the time, the longest internet shutdown imposed by any democratic state.^[1] Landlines, fixed-line internet and mobile networks were all blocked.^[1]

Why the timing is the argument

The blackout was not a response to unrest that followed the constitutional change. It was imposed as part of the constitutional change, beginning before the announcement.

Consider what that means procedurally. On 5 August 2019 the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir was altered by Presidential Order, using a mechanism that redefined whose consent was required. The mechanism, step by step → The people whose status was being altered could not telephone a relative, read a newspaper report, hold a meeting, contact a lawyer, or file a petition — because the means of doing any of those things had been switched off. Their elected politicians were in detention.

A constitutional change carried out in conditions where the affected population is physically unable to be consulted, to object, or to litigate is not merely a change they disagreed with. The blackout was the instrument that made the absence of consent operational.

Not an aberration — a practice

The 2019 shutdown was the extreme instance of an established pattern. OHCHR recorded in July 2019, before 5 August:^[2]

• UNESCO reported that South Asia had the highest number of shutdowns in the world between April 2017 and May 2018, with India the highest of any country;
• half of all internet shutdowns in India were reported from the Kashmir Valley;
• 65 of the 134 shutdown incidents recorded in India in 2018 were in Jammu and Kashmir;
• in the first four months of 2019 alone, Jammu and Kashmir experienced 25 separate shutdowns.

Twenty-five shutdowns in four months is not crisis management. It is a routine instrument of administration.

What a shutdown does to a population

Human Rights Watch titled its 2023 report on India’s shutdown practice with a sentence from someone living through one: “No Internet Means No Work, No Pay, No Food”.^[3] In a region where the internet mediates banking, wages, business orders, medical consultation, school and university teaching, welfare payments and government applications, cutting connectivity is not a restriction on expression alone. It suspends economic and social life.

The consequences documented during the 2019–21 period included students unable to attend classes or sit examinations, businesses unable to trade, doctors unable to access records, journalists unable to file, and lawyers unable to research or lodge filings.

The courts

In January 2020 the Supreme Court of India ruled on petitions concerning the shutdown, including one brought by Anuradha Bhasin, executive editor of the Kashmir Times. The Court held that the restrictions were subject to judicial review and to tests of necessity and proportionality, that indefinite suspension was impermissible, and that the orders imposing restrictions must be published so they could be challenged. It ordered the government to review all restrictions.^[4]

What it did not do was order services restored. The review was left to the executive that had imposed the restrictions. 4G was not restored for a further thirteen months. A judgment establishing that indefinite shutdowns are unlawful, followed by thirteen more months of shutdown, is a precise measure of what the remedy was worth.

2025: the practice continues in a new form

The blackout is not history. Following the 22 April 2025 Pahalgam attack, the fourteen UN special-procedure mandate holders recorded that authorities suspended mobile internet services and blocked around 8,000 social media accounts, including those of journalists and independent media outlets. Their assessment:^[5]

These measures are disproportionate restrictions on freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

UN Special Procedures, 24 November 2025

The method has shifted from cutting the cable to closing the accounts, which is cheaper, quieter and harder to measure. File 09 →