Centre shifts stance, releases source code for Aarogya Setu app

In a departure from its previous stance, the Centre on Tuesday released the source code of its contact tracing app Aarogya Setu and announced cash prizes for those who find a bug or vulnerability in it. Government officials overseeing the mobile application development also told The Indian Express that they will soon provide anonymised data to researchers to conduct their own analysis on COVID-19 trends in the country.

The release of the app’s Android source code (which 98 per cent of the 115 million Aarogya Setu users use) comes nearly two months after the app was released on April 2. When asked about the delay in releasing the code after significant calls from India’s developer community, IT Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney told The Indian Express: