The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has banned 47 apps, which are variants and cloned copies of the 59 apps banned earlier in June.
According to a Ministry official, “The apps were found to be operating despite the earlier ban. So, they have been taken down from application stores.”
The banned clones include Tiktok Lite, Helo Lite, SHAREit Lite, BIGO LIVE Lite and VFY Lite.
The 59 apps, most of which were Chinese, had been banned by the Centre in view of the information available that they are engaged in activities which are "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity and defence" of the country.
The initial list included popular short video service TikTok, browser and content app UC Browser, file sharing service Shareit, women-specific fashion shopping app Shein, popular mobile game Clash of Kings, and more.
The ban had come amid border tensions with China in Eastern Ladakh.
The government is preparing another exhaustive list of over 250 Chinese Apps, including apps linked to Alibaba, which it will examine for any user privacy or national security violations, government sources were cited as saying by India Today TV. The list includes Tencent-backed gaming app PUBG.
Some top gaming Chinese applications are also likely to be blacklisted. These applications have allegedly been sharing data with the Chinese agencies.
Indian app creators on Monday welcomed the decision to ban the clone apps.
‘‘We need to be very concerned about our data, and make sure it remains within India. We, at Chingari, have always been on top of this, hence we decided to never take any funds from China, nor use any of their technology in our app," said Sumit Ghosh, CEO and Cofounder of Chingari, a desi alternative to Chinese TikTok which has been downloaded by millions since the ban came into the force.
