Sanchar Saathi: DoT order to ‘pre-install’ app triggers storm

The government’s mandate on Monday (December 1, 2025) for smartphone makers to pre-install the Sanchar Saathi app sparked backlash from the Opposition and from digital rights activists. Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “unilateral directions to preload this app without taking into confidence various stakeholders and citizens is akin to dictatorship,” and that the app was “yet another addition to the long list of attempts by the BJP to strangulate the voice of the people”. 

Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi from the Shiv Sena (UBT), reacting to Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia’s assurance on Tuesday (December 2, 2025) that the app can be deleted if users wished, said, “When you say ‘mandated’ in your notification, when you are asking every mobile manufacturer to preload a government app, it then comes preloaded on every phone. So it is absolutely ridiculous [to say] that you can voluntarily download or delete the app.”

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CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas wrote in a letter to Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia that “compulsory pre-installation, even if deletion is later permitted, undermines the very principle of informed consent and transforms the mobile phone into a potential instrument of continuous digital supervision”.

Sanchar Saathi is an app that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) launched initially as a website in 2023 to allow users to flag fraudulent phone calls. The app also integrates other tools the DoT has launched in the past, such as a feature to check the “genuineness” of the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number assigned to a device, and to block a stolen phone by barring telecom operators from working on a blacklisted IMEI.

Mandating the app to be installed, as the DoT did in an order to phone makers on Monday (December 1, 2025), would likely mean that users wouldn’t be able to uninstall it, as is the case for private apps pre-installed on many smartphone brands’ devices. The DoT did not officially announce the move until after news reports came out describing the move. 

Some worried about the potential for a pre-installed app like this to be used as a carrier for malware and spyware. Anand Venkatanarayanan, co-founder of DeepStrat, a policy and cybersecurity consultancy, said on X that a “Regulator as a Malware operator is quite a thing in India,” as “[o]nce you get root in OS layer by a govt app, an Over the air update is all it takes to “get more permissions”.” Root access refers to privileged access in an operating system, which pre-installed apps usually have; such access allows apps to add to what they have access to without prompting users to accept additional permissions.

Last week, the DoT ordered WhatsApp and other platforms like it to restrict users to devices containing the SIM card they used to register. That order also ordered WhatsApp web and similar secondary access mechanisms to be logged out every six hours. Both directions were issued under the Telecom Cyber Security Rules, 2024, which were amended in November to allow the DoT to target a wide range of firms which use mobile numbers to identify users, going beyond its usual remit of telecom operators.