Report: By Mushtaq Bala
Srinagar, Aug 16: A series of digital breakdowns in Jammu and Kashmir has sparked widespread concern across the startup community, business sector, and the general public, exposing serious cracks in the Union Territory’s e-governance system.
The crisis first came to light in July when the J&K Single Window Clearance Portal—touted as a flagship initiative to ease industrial approvals—remained non-functional for days, leaving young entrepreneurs stranded. Startups provisionally registered with the Directorate of Industries, including those planning units at Khrew Industrial Estate, reported being unable to upload documents, track applications, or move forward with critical approvals.
“This was supposed to empower us. Instead, it’s turned into a bottleneck that’s crushing our hopes,” one distressed entrepreneur told Kashmir Pen on July 13. Others highlighted the sense of frustration, noting that valuable time was being lost in a region where entrepreneurship is seen as a lifeline against youth unemployment.
By late July, the crisis had deepened, triggering an outcry not just from startups but also from investors and members of the wider business community. They called on the government to either restore the portal immediately or revert to manual processing of files until the digital system was functional again. “If the technology fails, governance must not. Departments must return to manual operations until systems are fixed,” a prominent business leader said.
Now, in a fresh revelation, the J&K e-Governance Agency (JaKeGA) has officially confirmed that 91 government websites remain down across the Union Territory. The outages, ongoing since the first week of May, are attributed to the absence of mandatory “safe to host” certificates. According to JaKeGA’s response under the RTI Act, the security audits that generate these certificates were not conducted in time by various departments.
The audits are reportedly being carried out now by CERT-In empanelled agencies, while sites hosted at the State Data Centre are under review by third-party auditor M/S Grant Thornton, appointed by the government. However, when asked about interim arrangements to ensure continuity of services, JaKeGA pointed to individual departments, offering no clear solution.
The cumulative effect has been devastating: startups are unable to advance, businesses face uncertainty, and ordinary citizens are cut off from basic digital services. Critics say the prolonged failure reflects a “lack of seriousness” in handling digital governance despite official commitments to Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat.
With mounting frustration, the demand from stakeholders is now urgent and unified: restore the systems without delay, or provide reliable alternatives. Kashmir’s youth and economy, they argue, cannot afford to be casualties of a digital collapse | Kashmir Pen
