Cong leader moves court over Aarogya Setu app
NEW DELHI: The central government’s May 1 directive to make the mobile application Aarogya Setu mandatory for all persons working in government and private companies was challenged by a Congress leader in the Kerala high court on Thursday for violating right to privacy and autonomy.
The Aarogya Setu collects personal information of an individual without his or her consent and such coercive and forcible extraction of personal information is unheard of in a democratic and republic setup and is the attribute of a dictatorial system, the plea by the general secretary of the Thrissur district Congress Committee, John Daniel alleged.
“The petitioner is aggrieved by the order issued by Government of India, which makes the use of the mobile application, Aarogya Setu, mandatory for all. The petitioner is aggrieved by the dilution of the concepts of personal autonomy and informed consent effected by virtue of this mandatory imposition”, the plea filed through advocates Sriram Parakkat, KR Sripathi and Anupama Subramanian stated.
The Centre had launched Aarogya Setu on April 2 as a digital contact-tracing tool and to disseminate information regarding Covid-19. Contact-tracing is the practice of finding potential new infections that an infected person may have caused by coming close to other people.The app uses GPS and Bluetooth features to track contact and location trails.
The petitioner’s case was built on the argument that the app is a tracking mobile application which continuously collects data of an individual once installed on the mobile phone.
The petitioner argued that Aarogya Setu collects the personal information of a registered user including name, phone number, age, sex, profession, countries visited in the last 30 days and whether a person is a smoker or not and their medical condition.
The May 1 order of the Centre also directed state governments to proceed under section 188 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) against anyone who violates lockdown measures including the failure to install the app.