Aarogya Setu app developed by Centre in collaboration with 'best minds' of industry, academia, clarifies MeitY

The Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled government at the Centre clarified on October 28 that the Aarogya Setu app was developed by the Government of India in collaboration with private enterprises. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued the clarification after the Chief Information Commission sought explanation from the National Informatics Centre for saying it had no information about who created the contact tracing app.

"The names of all those associated with the development of the App and management of the App ecosystem at various stages was shared when the code was released in Open/Public Domain and the same was shared widely in media also," MeitY said in the statement.

The ministry further attached a GitHub link to the contributor page of the Aarogya Setu app code.

"On all such occasions, it has been clearly mentioned that the Aarogya Setu App has been developed by the NIC in collaboration with volunteers from Industry and Academia," the statement continued.

The Central Public Information Officers (CPIOs) of MeitY, National E-Governance Division (NeGD) and the NIC have been asked to appear before the Chief Information Commission (CIC) on November 24, and the ministry would comply with the order, it said in the statement.

The two-page clarification tweeted by the official handle of the Aarogya Setu application mentioned that the COVID-19 tracker has been downloaded by over 16.23 crore users and that it has helped strengthen the country's fight against the novel coronavirus outbreak.