JNU withdraws direction making app mandatory

New Delhi: Days after the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi issued a directive making the use of the Aarogya Setu mobile application mandatory, the varsity on Friday withdrew the clause making it compulsory for students and staff members.

Significantly, days before this, it was revealed by the Centre, in a bizarre RTI response, that the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology did not have any information about the creator of the application or how it was created. It later clarified that the app was built by it in collaboration with industry leaders and domain experts.

The COVID-19 contact tracing application has received multiple criticisms calling it a tool for mass surveillance.

Before the JNU's decision to reverse its order, another RTI response had revealed that the Centre had not been maintaining records of those the data of users had been shared with.

JNU's initial order was issued on October 21. The students of the varsity were in the process of mounting a legal challenge to the circular citing that the Centre had already told the Karnataka High Court that the app was not mandatory.

Moreover, the varsity has recently allowed a phased re-opening of the campus and the use of the app has now been made optional.