Train bookings drop 50% over protests
From January, SBI customers will be able to make ATM withdrawal above Rs 10,000 only after an OTP verification during 8 PM to 8 AM. The OTP-validated ATM transaction has been introduced to minimise the number of unauthorised transactions, SBI said in a Facebook post on Thursday. With this, SBI ATMs will have another layer of security for cash withdrawals, the bank said.
Mobile operators are losing around Rs 2.45 crore in revenue every hour they are forced to suspend internet services on government orders to control protests against the citizenship law, a top lobby group said on Friday.
Countrywide protests have raged for three weeks after Parliament passed the controversial legislation. To quell protests, government has deployed thousands of police as well intermittently ordered mobile data shutdowns at a time people have used social media such as Instagram and TikTok to wage a parallel battle online. Such internet suspensions have been criticised by internet freedom activists.
On Friday, mobile internet was ordered shut in at least 18 districts in northern Uttar Pradesh, a telecoms industry source said.
Indians consume an average 9.8 gigabyte of data per month on their smartphones, the highest in the world, according to Swedish telecoms gearmaker Ericsson. The country is the biggest market by users for social media firm Facebook and its messenger WhatsApp.
Internet shutdowns should not be the first course of action, said the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), which counts mobile carriers Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Industries’ Jio Infocomm as its members.
“We’ve highlighted the cost of these shutdowns,” COAI director general Rajan Mathews told Reuters. “According to our computation at the end of 2019, with the increase in online activities we believe the cost (of internet shutdowns) is close to Rs 24.5 million for an hour of internet shutdown.”
The revenue losses will pile on to the woes of the telecoms sector, bruised by a price war and saddled with a combined $13 billion in overdue payments following a Supreme Court ruling in October.
The bans follows an unprecedented shutdown of internet and text messaging services in parts of Delhi last week, widening a communications clampdown in restive areas stretching from disputed Kashmir to the northeast.
Internet services in Kashmir were suspended for over 140 days since New Delhi relegated its status to a federal administered territory from a state, making it the longest such shutdown in a democracy, according to digital rights group Access Now.
Anti- Citizenship Amendment Act protests have seen over 50 per cent drop in train ticket bookings, especially in metro cities, in the past few days. Tourist bookings have also been affected.
Travel in general and train travel in particular has been affected by the protests against Citizenship Amendment Act. Online train ticket discovery and booking engine Confirmtkt has witnessed close to 60 per cent decline in travel bookings since the protests started in different cities. Bookings in the last few days have fallen to 28 lakh from 68 lakh in the yearago period. The decline is clearly evident in metro cities and some of the other cities that saw massive protests.
“Many have postponed their travel plans due to the protests as well as the uncertainties. Further, internet connections got disrupted in some of the days, thus hindering train bookings. During the days of intense protests, some of the trains also had got cancelled. All these led to drop in train bookings,” said Sripad Vaidya, cofounder and COO, Confirmtkt.
The protests have affected the tour bookings as well. "Travellers are postponing their current plans due to safety concerns. We have seen a 20-23 per cent month-on-month fall in bookings in the affected cities in December,” Aloke Bajpai, co-founder & CEO, Ixigo.
New Delhi saw the highest decline of 37.44 per cent, followed by Dibrugarh with 23 per cent. Bengaluru recorded 11.45 per cent decline in travel bookings. Guwahati and Kolkata too experienced a slump in travel. Many travellers also had cancelled their bookings, anticipating tough conditions during the protests.
Travel operators expect protests to affect in-bound arrivals also. “Travel advisories issued might also impact foreign tourist arrival numbers for yearend travel," said Bajpai. The US, UK, France and Israel had issued travel advisories against ongoing protests.