NEW DELHI: The home ministry on Wednesday denied any move to block popular social media application Whatsapp in militancy-hit areas of Jammu & Kashmir, while also conceding that the encryption technology employed by the service provider made it impossible to monitor the communication being provided by it.

There were reports that Whatsapp was being used by terrorist outfits active in J&K to pass on instructions for terror-related activities, leading the home ministry to hold a meeting recently with representatives of the Central security agencies and J&K police on how to deal with the misuse of social media applications.

However, minister of state for home Hansraj Gangaram Ahir on Wednesday clarified in Rajya Sabha that there was no plan to restrict or block the use of Whatsapp in militancy-hit parts of J&K. “Because of encryption and propriety coding-decoding technique being used by Voice over Internet Protocol provider, it is not possible to monitor the communication being provided by such service providers,” he said in written reply to a question.

