While charges of sharing user data have been alleged by both Congress and BJP on each other, the former party on Monday took down its app.
Ever since Cambridge Analytica’s data breach news broke, Congress has been targeting the ruling BJP over the Narendra Modi app – the official mobile app of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – amid allegations that it sent user data to a US-based company without consent.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi yesterday posted, “Hi! My name is Narendra Modi. I am India’s Prime Minister. When you sign up for my official app, I give all your data to my friends in American companies. Ps. Thanks, mainstream media, you’re doing a great job of burying this critical story, as always.”
BJP today replied to Congress in the same flavour. Union Minister Smriti Irani joined the tweet-war, saying
Now that we’re talking tech, would you care to answer @RahulGandhi ji why Congress sends data to Singapore Servers which can be accessed by any Tom, Dick and Analytica? pic.twitter.com/U5YLTckBsf
— Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) March 26, 2018
Smriti Irani also scoffed at the Congress for deleting its own app.
While Congress’s Divya Spandana claimed that the membership page of the Congress app had been defunct for a while, “We don’t collect any personal data through the INC app. We discontinued it a long time ago. It was being used only for social media updates. We collect data for membership and this is through our website, this is encrypted.”
The allegations have exploded alongside a massive scandal over the misuse of personal data of Facebook users by the disgraced research group Cambridge Analytica to help political parties.
This morning, Rahul Gandhi posted another trenchant Tweet, with the hashtag #DeleteNaMoApp.
Modi’s NaMo App secretly records audio, video, contacts of your friends & family and even tracks your location via GPS.
He’s the Big Boss who likes to spy on Indians.
Now he wants data on our children. 13 lakh NCC cadets are being forced to download the APP.#DeleteNaMoApp
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 26, 2018
Amit Malviya, who heads the BJP’s IT cell, hit back after the Congress pulled down its app.
Rahul Gandhi gave a call to #DeleteNaMoApp, but Congress deleted its own App from the App store after they were called out. What is the Congress party hiding? pic.twitter.com/nAJTDAMmoc
— Amit Malviya (@malviyamit) March 26, 2018
The BJP has conceded that it is sharing information but also stresses that there is no wrongdoing. “Contrary to Rahul’s lies , fact is that data is being used for only analytics using third party service, similar to Google Analytics,” the party says.