Made In China Zindabad? Despite Ban On Apps, India Continues To Import Medical Testing Kits From Neighbour: Report
India was importing Made in China testing kits to meet its coronavirus requirements in June amid the standoff between Chinese and Indian troops at Galwan Valley in Ladakh, an India Today report has revealed.
According to the report, the Indian Council for Medical Research on May 8 had issued a tender through HLL Infra Tech Services for 33 lakh testing kits, of which 13 lakh were approved for purchase by a Chinese firm. Notably, this deal was signed nearly a month before the standoff.
However, when contacted ICMR told the news site that the role of outsourcing kits that the Drug Controller General India or CDSCO that has the authority to approve or suspend marketing licences to the distribution of companies.
Notably, while India has called for a suspension of nearly 100 Made in China apps, there is no call for banning or calling for halting medical licences of medical equipment from China.
Notably, after banning 59 Chinese applications in June, the Narendra Modi-led Central Government has banned 47 more apps in July, which were operating as clones of the earlier banned apps.
Earlier, India had banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, UC Browser, Helo, Likee, CamScanner, Vigo Video, Mi Video Call - Xiaomi, Clash of Kings as well as e-commerce platforms like Club Factory and Shein. Law, Electronics and Information Technology Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that government banned these apps for safety, security, defence, sovereignty and integrity of India.
The IT Ministry in a statement had said that it received many complaints from various sources, including several reports about misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for "stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users' data in an unauthorised manner to servers which have locations outside India".
"The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India, which ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India, is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures," the statement said.
Later, Prasad termed the ban as a "digital strike" on China as it came in the wake of the face-off between the Indian Army and Chinese troops at Galwan Valley in Eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on June 15, which also killed 20 Indian personnel, in one of the most bloody confrontations between the two sides since the 1972 war.
"We banned Chinese apps to protect data of countrymen; it was a digital strike," he said. "India is for peace, but if somebody casts an evil eye we will give a befitting reply," he added.
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