No, the UP government has not issued any circular to ban mobile phones in colleges and universities

A post is being shared widely on social media with a claim that the Uttar Pradesh government has banned the use of cellphones in colleges and universities. The post claims that the ban is also applicable to teaching faculty. Let’s try to analyze the claim made in the post.

The archived version of the post can be found here.

Claim: Uttar Pradesh government banned mobile phones in colleges and universities.
Fact: The Directorate of Higher Education (Uttar Pradesh) has issued a clarification that they did not give any directive to ban mobile phones in colleges and universities. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.

When searched for the news on Google with the keywords ‘UP ban mobiles in colleges’, it was found that even reputed news agencies like India Today (Archived), News18 (Archived), Outlook (Archived), Business Today (Archived), NDTV (Archived), Business Insider (Archived), Times Now News (Archived), Financial Express (Archived), The Week (Archived), Zee News (Archived), Asianet (Archived), Loksatta (Archived), Republic TV (Archived) and DNA India (Archived) have also published the same news.

In all the news articles, it was written that the Directorate of Higher Education (Uttar Pradesh) had issued a circular to ban mobile phones in colleges and universities. So, when searched for that circular on the Directorate of Higher Education (Uttar Pradesh) website, no such circular was found. But, in the News section on the website, it was found that the Directorate of Higher Education (Uttar Pradesh) has issued a clarification on this issue. The clarification (by Vandana Sharma – Director, Higher Education, U.P.) has refuted the claims made by some of the media channels and denied releasing any circular banning mobile phones in colleges and universities. Also, in a Hindustan Times article, it can be read that the UP Deputy CM has said that ‘the Yogi Adityanath government has not issued any order to ban the use of mobile phones by students in the state’s university and degree colleges’.