As part of its campaign to boycott Chinese goods, traders' body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Friday urged Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to impose ban on Chinese construction machinery in border area projects

Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said it has sent a letter to the Defence Minister urging him "to impose ban on usage of Chinese construction machinery and equipment having Internet of Things (IOT) devices which are able to transmit sensitive information to owners of the company in China".

CAIT National President BC Bhartia said in a release said that in various critical projects in border and security sensitive areas, various machines are supplied by China and its spare parts are being used quite often.

"In many cases, Indian companies doing such construction jobs are using Chinese machines which are installed with Internet of Things (IOT) devices which transmit machine operating parameters, including location in real time," CAIT said.

If such machines are used in strategically important locations of construction work at border or any other sensitive area which is of much importance for defence, "all the data of the machine as also their locations, operating hours and other strategic details can be transmitted to the servers owned by the owner of Chinese Companies located in China", CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said.

The traders' body urged Singh to take a note of the seriousness of the issue and take necessary steps to impose restrictions on using such machines particularly in border and other sensitive areas in the larger interest of the security and sovereignty of the country.