NEW DELHI, Apr 4: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday accused the Modi government of compromising the security of Indian citizens by hiding the truth about foreign surveillance through Chinese CCTV cameras and other digital platforms.
“This is a deliberate effort to keep India in the dark,” Gandhi said in a Hindi Facebook post, adding that banned Chinese cameras are still present in government buildings, while prohibited Chinese apps are resurfacing under new names. He also raised concerns about foreign AI platforms processing sensitive government data, noting that the government has remained silent on these issues.
Gandhi said he had raised detailed questions in Parliament to the Ministry of Electronics and IT, but received vague responses without concrete figures or platform names. “From which countries did our cameras originate? How many are certified as secure? Which foreign AI platforms are processing government data? Which banned apps continue under altered names? There were no answers,” he said.
Highlighting that five years after acknowledging the risks posed by over ten lakh Chinese cameras, the government has still failed to confirm the security of cameras currently in use, Gandhi alleged that the authorities are prioritizing cover-ups over public safety.
Responding to Gandhi’s unstarred question in Lok Sabha on March 25, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Jitin Prasada stated that the government is aware of cybersecurity risks and has taken several measures to strengthen the digital ecosystem. These include securing telecom networks, enhancing legal frameworks like the Telecommunication Act, 2023, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2022, and reforming CCTV security standards in India.
Prasada noted that steps such as the National Security Directive on Trusted Sources, implemented in 2021, ensure that telecom equipment from trusted sources is deployed, and mandatory essential requirements for CCTVs have been notified for the Indian market.
However, Gandhi insisted that these measures fail to address the ongoing risk of foreign surveillance and called for full disclosure of the origin and security of digital and surveillance systems used by the government.