After banning 59 Chinese applications last month, the Narendra Modi-led Central Government has banned 47 more apps, which were operating as clones of the earlier banned apps, reported India Today.
According to the report, the government will soon release a list of the 47 banned Chinese applications. It has also prepared a list of over 250 Chinese apps, including apps linked to Alibaba and Tencent's PUBG, noted the report.
Earlier, India had banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, UC Browser, Helo, Likee, CamScanner, Vigo Video, Mi Video Call - Xiaomi, Clash of Kings as well as e-commerce platforms like Club Factory and Shein. Law, Electronics and Information Technology Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that government banned these apps for safety, security, defence, sovereignty and integrity of India.
The IT Ministry in a statement had said that it received many complaints from various sources, including several reports about misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for "stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users' data in an unauthorised manner to servers which have locations outside India".
"The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India, which ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India, is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures," the statement said.
Later, Prasad termed the ban as a "digital strike" on China as it came in the wake of the face-off between the Indian Army and Chinese troops at Galwan Valley in Eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on June 15, which also killed 20 Indian personnel, in one of the most bloody confrontations between the two sides since the 1972 war.
"We banned Chinese apps to protect data of countrymen; it was a digital strike," he said. "India is for peace, but if somebody casts an evil eye we will give a befitting reply," he added.
