Centre withdraws order mandating preinstallation of ‘Sanchar Saathi’ app

NEW DELHI: The central government has withdrawn its order that mandated all new smartphones sold in the country to have the ‘Sanchar Saathi’ app preinstalled as part of cybersecurity measures. The decision was taken after widespread protests against the order. Smartphone manufacturers, including Apple, were reportedly preparing to challenge the directive legally.

The government said the app no longer needs to be made mandatory because its popularity is already increasing. According to the government, 1.4 crore users have downloaded the app so far, and six lakh downloads were recorded in the last 24 hours.

The app provides information on about 2,000 fraud cases every day. The government stated that the app only aims to protect users and does not perform any other function. It also said that users can uninstall the app whenever they want.

However, the opposition had accused the government of trying to invade citizens’ privacy and control them like “Big Boss.” They compared the move to the use of Pegasus spyware to monitor important citizens in the past. The opposition also said that forcing a preinstalled app on mobile phones is an act similar to authoritarianism.