Sanchar Saathi app must be pre-installed on phones: DoT
CYBER SECURITY
3 DECEMBER 2025
- The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) ordered smartphone manufacturers to pre-install the Sanchar Saathi app on new devices sold from March 2026, and to make sure “that [the app’s] functionalities are not disabled or restricted”.
Sanchar Saathi app
- The Sanchar Saathi app, first introduced as a portal in 2023, has been used to report scam calls, enable users to identify SIM cards registered in their name, and remotely disable phones if they are stolen.
- It is much like the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) DND app, the commercial spam equivalent.
- The app also integrates other tools the DoT has launched in the past, such as a feature to check the “genuineness” of the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number assigned to a device, and to block a stolen phone by barring telecom operators from working on a blacklisted IMEI.
- DoT said the move was meant to “safeguard the citizens from buying the non-genuine handsets, enabling easy reporting of suspected misuse of telecom resources and to increase effectiveness of the Sanchar Saathi initiative”.
- “Spoofed/Tampered IMEIs in telecom network leads to situation where same IMEI is working in different devices at different places simultaneously and pose challenges in action against such IMEIs,” the DoT said.
- “India has a big second-hand mobile device market. “Cases have also been observed where stolen or blacklisted devices are being re-sold. It makes the purchaser abettor in crime and causes financial loss to them. The blocked/blacklisted IMEIs can be checked using Sanchar Saathi App.”
- In a Google Play listing for the app, the DoT declared that the app does not collect any user data. In a separate statement, the DoT also defended its order to messaging platforms.
Root access
- Root access refers to privileged access in an operating system, which pre-installed apps usually have; such access allows apps to add to what they have access to without prompting users to accept additional permissions.
Worldwide Smartphone makers resistance
- Some smartphone makers have resisted government mandates to pre-install apps around the world.
- Apple, for instance, resisted the TRAI’s draft regulations to install a spam-reporting app, after the firm balked at the TRAI app’s permissions requirements, which included access to SMS messages and call logs.
Opposition backlash
- The order received backlash from the Opposition and from digital rights activists.
- Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia assured that the app can be deleted if users wished.
- CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas said, “compulsory pre-installation, even if deletion is later permitted, undermines the very principle of informed consent and transforms the mobile phone into a potential instrument of continuous digital supervision”.
DoT order on SIM cards
- The DoT has ordered WhatsApp and other platforms like it to restrict users to devices containing the SIM card they used to register.
- That order also ordered WhatsApp web and similar secondary access mechanisms to be logged out every six hours.
- Both directions were issued under the Telecom Cyber Security Rules, 2024, which were amended in November 2025 to allow the DoT to target a wide range of firms which use mobile numbers to identify users, going beyond its usual remit of telecom operators.
