Munmun Kaur
Published On: February 14, 2022 at 13:56 IST
Adding to the already banned 270 Chinese apps in India, the Central Government has yet again banned another 54 smartphone apps that may be of Chinese origin.
This is the first lot of apps that have been banned in 2022 after a total number of 270 apps were banned since 2020. As per the report of ET Times, a number of these banned apps belong to the stable of large Chinese technology firms such as Tencent, Alibaba, and gaming firm NetEase and are ‘Rebranded or rechristened avatars’ of apps that were banned in the country beginning from 2020.
The Ministry of Electronics and IT banned these apps on the grounds that they were transferring sensitive data of Indians to servers in foreign countries such as China. The Ministry further directed top app stores including Google’s Playstore to block these applications.
A senior official of the Ministry said that apps such as ByteDance-owned TikTok and Tencent’s WeChat were available for download through alternative means such as APK files, and the Government has taken Cognizance of it.
Earlier, in 2020, the Government had cited Sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of state and public order as reasons for the ban.
Although, the list of banned apps is not available as of now, as per the reports, the new list majorly includes the clones of apps that were already banned in 2020.