India backs off mandatory 'cyber safety' app after surveillance backlash

India has dropped plans to require smartphone makers to pre-install a government-backed “cyber safety” app on all new devices, following criticism over surveillance concerns.

The Communications Ministry said Wednesday it will no longer force Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi and other manufacturers to load the Sanchar Saathi app onto new phones. Officials said they rolled back the mandate because of the “increasing acceptance” of the tool, which has reportedly been downloaded by 14 million users so far, including 600,000 new registrations on Tuesday alone.

“The mandate to install the app was meant to accelerate this process and make the app available to less aware citizens,” the ministry said.

The reversal came less than a week after New Delhi ordered manufacturers to add the app to every new handset within 90 days — and ensure it could not be deleted — sparking concerns among privacy groups that the policy would give authorities access to hundreds of millions of phones.

The government, however, said Sanchar Saathi was designed to curb fraud and phone theft by letting users verify device identifiers and report stolen phones.

“The app is secure and purely meant to help citizens against bad actors in the cyber world … There is no other function other than protecting users, and they can remove the app whenever they want,” the telecommunications authorities said.

The original order prompted industry pushback. Reuters reported earlier this week, citing people familiar with the matter, that Apple planned to tell officials it could not comply with the original requirement because embedding third-party software would compromise the security architecture of iOS. The company does not accept similar mandates in other markets, the sources said.

Digital rights groups welcomed the government’s reversal. The Internet Freedom Foundation called the move positive but said it is still waiting for the official legal order that should accompany the announcement.

“For now, we should treat this as cautious optimism, not closure, until the formal legal direction is published and independently confirmed,” the organization said.