Who Created Aarogya Setu App?

New Delhi: Who developed Aarogya Setu? This is what everyone is asking after both National Informatics Centre (NIC) and the IT ministry, who, as per Aarogya Setu’s website developed it, have denied knowledge of its creation.

NIC has claimed it has no information about who created this COVID-19 contact tracing website and how, reported Hindustan Times (HT).

The Central Information Commission (CIC) on Tuesday issued show-cause notices to the  Central Public Information Officers (CPIOs), Ministry of Electronics and  Information Technology, National Informatics Centre, National E-Governance Division (NeGD) for “prima facie obstruction of information and providing an evasive reply on an RTI application related to Aarogya Setu App”, LiveLaw reported.

“Denial of information by authorities cannot be accepted,” NDTV quoted the top RTI body as saying.

“None of the CPIOs were able to explain anything regarding who created the App, where are the files, and the same is extremely preposterous”, CIC added.

“The Commission directs the CPIO, NIC to explain this matter in writing as to how the website https://aarogyasetu.gov.in/ was created with the domain name gov.in, if they do not have any information about it,” Information Commissioner Vanaja N. Sarna said.

The complaint was filed by Saurav Das who claimed to have approached the NIC,  NeGD and the Ministry of Electronics and IT asking details about the creation of the application, reported HT.

NIC replied to Das that it did not hold information on the app’s creation. NeGD brushed off the query saying, “The information sought is not related to (our division).”

MeitY’s Central Public Information Officer response was that it could not provide where the information regarding app’s creation can be accessed. While, the ministry claimed it is unaware of the origin of the app and has no idea how it was created, Huffpost reported.