The Center said Thursday that it agrees to provide all information requested under the RTI Act on the application of contact tracing and comply with the instructions of the Central Information Commission, which had issued a notice asking the government to explain the evasive answer about the app. creation.
Officials said the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has taken lapses in providing information on the Aarogya Setu app, which has data from millions of users, very strictly. They said the ministry has issued instructions to take appropriate action against the officials responsible for this. It has also directed the National Informatics Center (NIC) and the National Electronic Governance Division (NeGD) to take appropriate action against the officers who deal with RTI consultation in their organizations.
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The ministry, they said, is committed to providing all information requested under the RTI Act to the applicant and to comply with CIC’s instructions. The commission had called the government’s response “extremely absurd.”
The RTI application, filed by Saurav Das, had sought information about the creation of the app in light of the privacy concerns surrounding it. Government officials from NIC and NeGD and MeitY declined to comment on the question posed by Das, prompting him to file an appeal with the CIC. The app has been particularly controversial as news reports and data privacy activists have alleged that the app collects information and stores it.
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“The CPIO (central public information officer), NIC submissions that all the file related to application creation is not with NIC is understandable, but the same submissions if accepted from MeITY, NeGD and NIC in full , then it becomes more relevant for Now find out how an App was created and there is no information with any of the relevant public authorities, “said the CIC in its order dated October 26.
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