Smriti takes dig at Rahul amid data breach allegations

Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani on Monday took a swipe at Congress President Rahul Gandhi amid allegations that his party had shared user data with a Singapore-based firm from its official app "WithINC" that has now disappeared from the Google Play Store.

Irani tweeted to Gandhi, asking him if his team had misunderstood his demand to get Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "NaMo" app deleted and instead removed "WithINC" from the Google store.

"Ye kya Rahul Gandhi ji. It seems your team is doing the opposite of what you asked for. Instead of deleting NaMoApp, they have deleted the Congress App itself," Irani said, posting screen shots of the play store that shows the Congress app is not available.

She asked the Congress chief if he would care to answer "why Congress sends data to Singapore servers which can be accessed by any Tom, Dick and Analytica", referring to the British firm that was at the centre of a storm for illegally accessing Facebook user data for political purposes.

The minister's remarks came after the Congress described the allegations of its involvement in the data breach baseless.

The Congress said the "WithINC" app was being used for social media updates alone since transitioning the membership to the website.

"This morning, we were forced to remove the app from the Playstore as the wrong URL was being circulated and people were being misled. The "WithINC" app is a membership app and has not been in use for over five months since we moved membership to http://www.inc.in from 16th Nov 2017," the party said in a series of tweets.

Amid allegations and counter allegations, Gandhi also accused Modi of misusing his position to build a personal database with the data of millions of Indians via the NaMoApp promoted by the government.

"If as PM, he wants to use tech to communicate with India, no problem. But use the official PMO APP for it. This data belongs to India, not Modi," Gandhi said hitting out at Modi and the BJP after the ruling party accused the Congress of sharing users' data with a Singapore-based firm.

--IANS

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