Srinagar, Feb 8: Facebook and Instagram have blocked the handles of Chinar Corps, the Indian Army's strategically located formation in the Kashmir valley, for over a week now and have not responded to the official communication in this regard, officials said on Tuesday.

The pages on Facebook and Instagram were created to negate the lies and propaganda flowing from across the border and also to apprise people of the real situation in the Kashmir valley, an official said.

A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the matter had been taken up with the authorities concerned in Facebook, but so far there has been no response from their side.

"A link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed," read the messages on both Facebook as well as Instagram pages of the Chinar Corps, a popular name of XV Corps of the Army in Kashmir.

There was no immediate response from Facebook and Instagram, which are a part of the same company.

The two social media websites remove a page if it does not follow the rules and regulations laid by the company or if people report about it.

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Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.

Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.

He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.

Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.

He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.

Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.

He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.