Indian PM Narendra Modi’s official mobile application has been criticised for sending personal user data to a third party without their consent.
A security researcher had tweeted that the app was sending personal user data to a third-party domain that was traced to a US company.
Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has denied the allegation, according to a BBC report.
The party said the data was being used only for analytics to offer all users the ‘most contextual content’.
The researcher, who tweets under the pseudonym Elliot Alderson, posted a series of tweets on Saturday stating Modi’s app was sending personal user data to a third party.
Rahul Gandhi, the chief of the main opposition Congress party, took to Twitter on Sunday to criticise Modi.
The BJP responded swiftly, saying Gandhi was trying to divert attention.
Last week India’s law and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said there were ‘numerous reports’ of the Congress party’s connections with controversial data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.
He asked Gandhi to ‘explain’ the company’s role in his social media outreach.
The opposition party has denied the charges.
Cambridge Analytica is embroiled in a storm over claims it exploited the data of millions of Facebook users.
The party said the data from Modi’s app was being used for analytics.
The security researcher later posted a new tweet on Sunday saying Modi’s app had been ‘quietly’ updated its privacy policy.
Modi launched his official app in 2015, adding another platform to his massive social media presence.
He is among the five most popular politicians on Twitter with 41.4 million followers.
