Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday claimed that the Sanchar Saathi app, the fraud reporting app that the government wants to pre-install on all devices will be optional and users can delete it.
“…If you don’t want Sanchar Saathi, you can delete it. It’s optional… It’s our duty to introduce this app to everyone. It’s up to the user to keep it on their devices or not,” he told reporters.
The clarification comes especially at a time when opposition MPs express their strong protest against the mandatory installation of this application on smartphones. The backlash began after the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) ordered phone manufacturers and importers to ensure that its fraud detection app Sanchar Saathi is pre-installed on all new devices within 90 days.
Reuters cited sources as saying that US tech giant Apple plans to defy the mandate and will communicate the same to New Delhi.
Congress demands immediate repeal of ‘tracking app’
Addressing reporters on 2 December, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra accused the government of dictatorship and violating citizens’ right to privacy, calling Sanchar Saathi a “surveillance app”. The party demanded that the government withdraw the app immediately.
“Sanchar Saathi is a spying app and it is clearly ridiculous. Citizens have the right to privacy. Everyone must have the right to privacy to send messages to family and friends without the government looking at everything,” she said, accusing the Center of turning the country into a “dictatorship”.
“It’s not just phone snooping. They’re turning this country into a dictatorship in all forms. The parliament doesn’t work because the government refuses to discuss anything. It’s very easy to blame the opposition, but they don’t allow any discussion about anything, and that’s not democracy,” she added.
Priyanka Gandhi added that a healthy democracy requires discussion and everyone has different opinions and that there is a very fine line between reporting fraud and monitoring what every citizen of India is doing on their phone.
“It shouldn’t work that way. There should be an effective fraud reporting system. We’ve discussed this for a long time from a cybersecurity perspective. Cybersecurity is needed, but that doesn’t mean it gives you an excuse to get into every citizen’s phone. I don’t think any citizen is happy,” she added.
Earlier, Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury moved an adjournment motion in the Rajya Sabha to discuss the government’s instructions to install the Sanchar Saathi app. She asked for a discussion under Article 267, which calls for the adjournment of all other business to deal with the matter.
In a post on X, Congress general secretary KC Venugopal said that a pre-installed app that cannot be deleted is a “dystopian tool” and added: “Big brother cannot monitor us. This direction of DoT is considered unconstitutional. Right to privacy is an integral part of the fundamental right to life and liberty enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution. Every uninstalled government tool which is a pre-installed tool of the Government of India cannot be monitored. to every movement, interaction and decision of every citizen.”
