Last year, the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir experienced the most disruption of any single region anywhere in the world, with 24 incidents.
According to Surfshark, a virtual private network provider,, “4.2 billion people were affected by internet censorship in 2022, with India and J&K being among the hardest hit,” the company said today. In 196 countries and territories, the company has tracked instances of partial and complete internet and social media shutdown.
Internet outages in J&K skyrocketed after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked its constitutional autonomy and changed its status from state to union territory in 2019.
Internet outages in J&K skyrocketed after the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the state’s constitutional autonomy and changed its status from a state of India to a union territory directly governed by New Delhi in 2019.
The region also experienced the world’s longest internet outage in a democracy, lasting from August 2019 until January 2020, when 2G internet was restored. It took the authorities another 18 months to restore 4G services.
In fact, J&K alone will account for 70% of all internet outages in India by 2022. The remaining cases were reported during nationwide demonstrations against the government’s new military recruitment scheme. Other parts of the country saw up to ten cases, according to Surfshark’s report.
There were 112 cases worldwide, spread across 36 countries.
“Last year, internet censorship affected more than half of the world’s population…
“These can be devastating and extremely dangerous, particularly during times of war, protests, or violent government repression “said a Surfshark representative.