Both companies say it’s a case of omission; give assurance to rectify
R Jai Krishna
NEW DELHI: If you are a Netizen residing in Jammu & Kashmir and want to open an email account, then better choose the provider which lists your State.
Call it irony or a grave blunder, MSN Hotmail and Rediff.com, unarguably popular email sites in India, does not feature Jammu and Kashmir.
Quite obviously, the sufferers are only disturbed to find the omission.
An emotionally-disturbed Abhishek Behal, who hails from the valley, shared the issue with CyberMedia News.
“I tried to create an email ID with Hotmail. When I came to the option of States, I felt alienated when my State was not there on the list and it left me surprised. The people of Kashmir think that they are part and parcel of India and the issue is very contentious,” he said.
When contacted, MSN Hotmail initially said it was unaware of the issue. However, a day later MSN termed it as a case of omission.
“We do not know how it got missed and are rectifying the issue. The State will be added in the next few hours, and the technical team is already working on it,” said Satya Raghavan from the marketing department, MSN Hotmail.
Rediff.com has included Jammu as an option whereas Kashmir is left out.
“It is an error of omission. There are many other cities in the list. Leaving out Kashmir valley is not intentional. However, when we have represented all the States, we will get it rectified,” said Manish Agarwal, vice president (marketing) at Rediff.com
That being the case, it is much better with other email service providers, such as Gmail, which only asks for the country, but not the State or the city. And so is the case with Yahoo and America Online.
Reacting to the issue, Nitin Desai, under-secretary-general of the Internet Governance Forum, said that though the IGF does not have to do anything with the issue, the State list has to be complete. “I am surprised on what happens if someone wants to register from Kashmir, what they do,” he said.
