After 52 Chinese Apps, (clone and lite) 47 apps banned; 275 Apps including PUBG under review

According to an India TV report, the Indian Government has banned 47 more apps of Chinese origin in the country. These 47 Apps were operating as clones of earlier 52 banned apps. The list of the 47 Chinese applications will be released soon, but it will mostly include the lite versions, apps impersonating the banned apps and Pro & Advanced Versions.

Some of the banned apps include TikTok Lite, Helo Lite, ShareIt Lite, Bigo Lite and VFY Lite. When CIOL checked on the Play Store and Apple App Store, they were already unavailable. It could be possible that the government imposed the ban previously. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology found some apps to be operating despite the ban via these versions. They have been taken down from application stores.

275 Apps after these 47 apps ban under review

India has also prepared a list of 275 apps that it will examine for any user privacy or national security violations. The report suggests that some top gaming applications are there in the new list. This includes the fanatically increasing mobile game PUBG

The earlier ban was on popular apps including TikTok, SHAREit, UC Browser, Helo, and WeChat, among others. The government had ordered telcos to block access to all those apps as well as their related websites shortly after announcing the decision publicly through a press release. It also directed Apple and Google to remove the banned apps from their respective app stores in the country.

The Government announced the ban under the provisions of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act.