Amidst privacy concerns being raised over the directive from the Government of India to mandatorily pre-install the Sanchar Saathi app on all new smartphones, the Central government as rolled the directive back. On Wednesday (3rd December), the government stated that the directive issued to all manufacturers, including Appal has been rolled back as the “the number of users who have downloaded the app (over six lakh in the past 24 hours) has been increasing rapidly”.
Government removes mandatory pre-installation of Sanchar Saathi App
— PIB India (@PIB_India) December 3, 2025
The Government with an intent to provide access to cyber security to all citizens had mandated pre-installation of Sanchar Saathi app on all smartphones. The app is secure and purely meant to help citizens from…
In the statement, the government said, “The Government with an intent to provide access to cyber security to all citizens had mandated pre-installation of Sanchar Saathi app on all smartphones. The app is secure and purely meant to help citizens from bad actors in the cyber world. It helps in ” Jan bhagidari” by all citizens in reporting on such bad actors and actions while protecting users themselves. There is no other function other than protecting the users in the app and they can remove the app whenever they want. This has been clarified by Government.“
“So far 1.4 crore users have downloaded this app and are contributing to information on 2000 fraud incidents per day. The number of users has been increasing rapidly and the mandate to install the app was meant to accelerate this process and make the app available to less aware citizens easily. Just in last one day, 6 lakh citizens have registered for downloading the App which is a 10x increase in its uptake. This is affirmation of faith by citizens on this App for protecting themselves provided to them by the Government. Given Sanchar Saathi’s increasing acceptance, Government has decided not to make the pre- installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers,” the statement added.
The rollback came right after it was reported that Apple and Google are preparing to resist the government’s directive asking all manufacturers to mandatorily pre-install the cybersecurity app on new devices.
Earlier, when the confidential directive from the Department of Telecommunications went public, insisting on the pre-installation of the Sanchar Saathi app, concerns were raised by civil society groups. Several opposition leaders criticised the government and called it a snooping attempt as there were concerns that uninstalling the app would not be possible.
However, Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia categorically stated that the app is optional and if users do not want the app, they can uninstall it from their devices. He added that the government’s responsibility is to familiarise users with the tool and not to force it upon them.
