NEW DELHI: The central government has withdrawn its order that mandated all new smartphones sold in the country to have the ‘Sanchar Saathi’ app preinstalled as part of cybersecurity measures. The decision was taken after widespread protests against the order. Smartphone manufacturers, including Apple, were reportedly preparing to challenge the directive legally.

The government said the app no longer needs to be made mandatory because its popularity is already increasing. According to the government, 1.4 crore users have downloaded the app so far, and six lakh downloads were recorded in the last 24 hours.

The app provides information on about 2,000 fraud cases every day. The government stated that the app only aims to protect users and does not perform any other function. It also said th

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