Government lifts restriction on SMS

The restrictions imposed on sending bulk SMSes and MMSes, imposed in the wake of nationwide rumours of attacks on persons of northeastern states, was Thursday lifted by the government.

"The restrictions on SMSes and MMSes has been removed," home ministry spokesperson K.S. Dhatwalia said here.

The government issued a notification in this regard.

Rumours earlier this month about imminent revenge attacks for the killings of Muslims in Assam sparked an exodus of people of northeastern states from cities such as Bangalore and Pune.

Initially, the government restricted the number of SMSes that could be sent from a mobile phone in a day to five.

The restriction on sending more than five SMSes and over 20 KB of data through mobile phones came into force Aug 17. The order was relaxed to 20 messages a day Aug 23.