After criticism, govt says ‘Sanchar Saathi’ app to be optional & removable

After criticism about the mandatory installation of ‘Sanchar Saathi’ app in all phones, Union telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday said that the app’s usage in phones will be optional and users will have the option of removing it like any other app.

Scindia said the Union government had come up with the app to tackle scams and theft involving mobile phones.

“There is no call monitoring. If you want to, you can activate it. If you don’t, you don’t have to activate it. If you want to keep it in your phone, you can keep it. If you want to delete it, you can delete it,” Scindia told reporters in Hindi.

However, the written order by Ministry of Communication, as reported by Medianama, contradicted Scindia’s statement. It clearly said the app’s installation is mandatory with no option of removal or deactivation.

The direction further said the app will be installed via mandatory software updates in phones manufactured before the issuance of the direction.

In the direction signed by Pranay Diwakar, the ADG of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Intelligence Unit at Ministry of Communications ordered all manufacturers selling phones in India to “ensure that the pre-installed Sanchar Saathi application is readily visible and accessible to the end users at the time of first use or device setup and that its functionalities are not disabled or restricted”.

For phones that have already been manufactured or sold before the order’s passage, manufacturers “shall make an endeavour to push the app through software updates”.

Critics of the move have said such mandatory installation of a government app will be a breach of privacy of a user.

Free speech watchdog Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said in a statement that the direction could be misused for “surveillance”.

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“In effect, the state is asking every smartphone user in India to accept an open ended, updatable surveillance capability on their primary personal device, and to do so without the basic guardrails that a constitutional democracy should insist on as a matter of course. IFF is deeply concerned with this direction that sets up a precedent to enforce client side scanning on all smartphones in India and calls for its recall,” the IFF said in a statement