The latest manufactured outrage over the Central government’s decision to pre-install the Sanchar Saathi app on new smartphones exposes the Opposition’s chronic habit of attacking first and understanding later. Congress, predictably leading the chorus, has rushed to label the app “intrusive” and “dictatorial,” as if the government were trying to plant surveillance tools inside every Indian’s home. What they do not tell the public — perhaps because it destroys their own narrative — is what the app actually does, what it does not do, and how their selective outrage conveniently ignores far greater privacy threats that they have silently tolerated for years.
Sanchar Saathi is not a content-snooping gadget. It is a straightforward anti-fraud, citizen-protection tool developed by the Department of Telecommunications and tightly integrated with the CEIR platform. It allows an ordinary user to verify a device’s IMEI number, detect counterfeit handsets, identify how many SIM cards are linked to their ID, block a lost or stolen phone, and report fraudulent numbers and scam calls. None of this requires access to personal content. The app does not read WhatsApp messages, browse through your photos, track your location, record your calls, mine your personal documents, or peer into your banking apps. It interacts only with telecom-layer identifiers like SIM registrations and IMEI numbers — elements that telecom operators already handle. The only difference is that now, for once, the citizen gets visibility and control over what is being done in their name.
To call such an app an “intruder into public information” is not merely inaccurate; it is dishonest. Intrusion requires access to private data. Sanchar Saathi accesses none. It operates at the outer shell of the telecom system, not in the private interior of the user’s digital life. By the Opposition’s logic, every telecom provider is an intruder, every SIM KYC is a privacy breach, and every OTP verification is surveillance. It is a strange argument for a party that governed for decades without ever objecting to far more opaque mechanisms embedded across the telecom ecosystem.
The Congress tries to counter this by attacking the so-called “nothing to hide” reasoning. Yet this is another distortion. Citizens object to government overreach when the government wants access to personal content. Here, nothing even remotely close to that is happening. This is not a data-mining tool. It is a fraud-prevention tool. If a platform can help you prevent SIM-swaps, block stolen phones, detect cloned IMEIs, and safeguard yourself against phishing and UPI fraud, then the Opposition must explain what sacred privacy principle is being violated. They cannot — because no such violation exists. Their arguments are political, not technological.
And this is where their hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore. For years, Chinese-manufactured smartphones sold in India have been loaded with pre-installed foreign apps and deeply embedded OEM software that users cannot delete. These components have been repeatedly flagged by cybersecurity analysts for excessive permissions, continuous telemetry collection, and opaque background activity. Many of these apps can access contact lists, SMS logs, location data, and device identifiers — all without meaningful user control. Yet not once did Congress wage a political war over these genuine privacy risks. Not one street protest. Not one fiery press conference. Not one moral sermon about intrusion. Not even when the government raised national-security flags regarding foreign firmware baked into millions of Indian devices.
Perhaps the silence has something to do with that 2008 MoU between the Congress Party and the Chinese Communist Party, signed in Beijing, which was never fully explained to the Indian public. Congress leaders become strangely tongue-tied whenever this pact resurfaces in public discussion. Yet this very party now wishes to portray itself as the sole guardian of digital privacy and sovereignty in India. Selective patriotism is bad enough; selective privacy outrage is worse.
None of this means the government is above scrutiny. A responsible Opposition should demand transparency, open audits, clear legal boundaries, and accountability in any digital initiative. They should be asking the government to publish the app’s privacy architecture, commit to statutory limits preventing mission creep, ensure the code undergoes third-party audits, and impose the same strict standards on all pre-installed apps, including those pushed by foreign OEMs. These are legitimate, democratic demands. Unfortunately, instead of constructive proposals, we get shallow political theatrics from leaders who have never objected to opaque foreign software sitting inside the devices of millions of Indians.
This refusal to be intellectually honest comes at a cost. India today faces the most dangerous wave of digital fraud in its history. From UPI scams to fake KYC calls, from identity theft to SIM manipulation, cybercriminals are looting ordinary citizens with increasing sophistication. Families lose life savings. Senior citizens lose pension funds. Students lose education money. Every month, lakhs of Indians are being robbed by gangs who exploit loopholes in the telecom ecosystem. Sanchar Saathi is an attempt to close these loopholes and empower users with real-time visibility.
The Opposition may enjoy their moment of noise, but citizens deserve better. They deserve tools that protect them, not politicians who pretend to care about privacy while defending a status quo in which foreign pre-installed apps freely harvest user data for commercial gain. They deserve an informed conversation about digital rights, not fear-mongering that equates anti-fraud infrastructure with mass surveillance.
Sanchar Saathi is not spyware. It is not snooping software. It is not a Trojan horse disguised as a safety app. It is a consumer protection platform — far less intrusive than the preloaded bloatware that comes with half the phones sold in India, and far more relevant at a time when digital fraud has become one of the biggest threats ordinary Indians face.
If an app can help you prevent identity theft, block stolen phones, detect SIM misuse, neutralise cloning, and protect your savings — and do all this without touching your personal content — then opposing it is not a defence of privacy. It is a defence of ignorance. Worse, it is a defence of vulnerability. And the only people who benefit from that are cybercriminals.
Perhaps that is the real tragedy: in trying to score points against the government, the Opposition ends up undermining the safety of the very people they claim to defend.
