Aarogya Setu is a curious app made by a curiouser group of people. Since its launch on April 2, India’s contact tracing app has been mired in one controversy after another — usually of its own making. And now it has waded into another one. But it has one bright spot — NITI Aayog’s involvement in creation of Aarogya Setu has now been acknowledged by a MEITY officer publicly. On October 26, the Central Information Commission, which deals with RTI-related complaints, hauled up the chief public information officers of National e-Governance Division (NeGD) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) for providing evasive replies to RTIs related to Aarogya Setu. Saurav Das, an RTI activist and journalist, had asked these departments for details about how the app came to be and who were involved in its development, amongst other things. LiveLaw first reported this story. Das had also filed a complaint against National Informatics Centre (NIC) for not providing information but the CIC rejected that. However, since all three government agencies said that they did not have any information on the app, the CIC basically called the circumstances absurd. “The Commission observes that it is a current issue and it is not possible that there was no file movement while creating this App, a citizen cannot go round in circles to find out the custodian. “The CPIO, NIC’s submissions that the entire file related to creation of the App is not with NIC is understandable, but the same submissions…
