Govt Fires 70 Questions At TikTok, Other Banned Chinese Apps; Permanent Ban If Fail To Reply By July 22

Almost 59 Chinese apps, including Tik Tok and UC Browser were banned by the government saying that they are "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India.

(Representative Image/ Getty)

New Delhi: In the recent development, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has issued a fresh notice to the 59 banned Chinese apps. In the notice, the ministry has send a list of over 70 odd questions for the banned apps to answer. As per the reports, the authorities have given these apps three weeks time to respond to all the 70 questions. In the order, Ministry said that if these apps fails to respond to the asked questions by July 22, then the ban imposed on them would become permanent in India. According to various media reports, the responses to these various questions will be studied by a high-level panel that will have members from the intelligence bureau, cyber security wing, department of telecommunication, internal security and IT Ministry. This has certainly added to the mount of problems for famed apps such as TikTok and Helo which have mass users from India. Almost 59 Chinese apps, including Tik Tok and UC Browser were banned by the government saying that they are "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order”. The list of apps banned in India includes TikTok, SHAREit, US Browser, Baidu map, Helo, Mi Community, Club Factory, WeChat, UC News, Weibo, Xender, Meitu, CamScanner, and Clean Master - Cheetah Mobile. TikTok, one of the 59 apps banned is owned by ByteDance, had said that it complies with all data privacy and security requirements under the Indian law and has not shared any information of its users in India with any foreign government, including China. Of all the social media apps, TikTok has more than 200 million users in India.  The app has surpassed two billion downloads in April and gained a huge market in India, as per data analytics firm Sensor Tower data. Around 30 per cent of downloads came from India.