New Delhi: A huge political row has erupted over the Centre’s direction to mobile phone manufacturers to install the Sanchar Saathi mobile application in all the devices manufactured or imported in India. While the government has stated that the move aims to protect citizens from cyber fraud and can help recover lost phones, Congress and other Opposition parties have alleged that this step towards state surveillance and demanded the immediate rollback of this direction. The digital safety initiative of the Centre, Sanchar Saathi, provides multiple citizen-centric services through a mobile application and its web portal.
These services include Chakshu, which helps phone users report suspected cyber fraud. Such proactive reporting of suspected fraud communication allows the Department of Telecommunications to prevent misuse of telecom resources for cybercrime, financial scams, etc, the Sanchar Saathi website stated this. Chakshu can also be used to report commercial spam calls. Chakshu also enables people to report malicious web links and fraudulent communications. These include phishing links and device cloning attempts, and other malware delivered through SMS, RCS, iMessage and social media platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram.
The Department of Telecommunications, which comes under the Ministry of Communications helmed by Jyotiraditya Scindia, has directed mobile phone manufacturers to ensure that the Sanchar Saathi application is pre-installed on all mobile handsets manufactured or imported in India within 90 days, starting November 28. Ensure that the pre-installed Sanchar Satthi application is evident 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, the phone companies have been asked to push the application through software updates. The Centre has warned that failure to comply with these directions shall attract action.
By some reports, the government’s mandate may spark a tussle with Apple, which has opposed such directions in the past, citing privacy and security risks. Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi did not respond, nor did the Communications Ministry. The government did not consult the phone manufacturers before the order was issued. The applications have been used to block 42 lakh stolen phones and helped in the recovery of 26 lakh phones. The websites stated that the application has clocked over 1 crore downloads on Android phones and nearly 10 lakh on iOS.
