On 27th October, the Central Information Commission (CIC) had passed a severe remark against the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MEITY) and National Informatics Centre (NIC) for failing to answer who had created the Aarogya Setu App, calling it as “Extremely Preposterous”.
The complaint was filed before the CIC by RTI Activist & Independent Journalist Saurav Das on Aarogya Setu. While hearing the case, CIC has declined Das’s permission to attend the next hearing on the matter. And then fixed the next date of hearing on 24th November, after issuing the show-cause notice to the CPIOs of the two public authorities and directing all the CPIOs to be present before the court on the said date.
However, Das wrote an email to the CIC Vanaja N Sarna’s office about not receiving a next hearing notice which also highlighted the larger public and media interest in the case. In response, the CIC’s office informed him that “his presence is not required as it is a show-cause notice hearing which will be between the Commission & CPIOs concerned only.”
On the other side, the matter was quickly trending on social media platforms while mocking Aarogya Setu’s invention as an ‘Act of God’. Following which, the Ministry had issue a press notice that the information about the developers of the app was available in public domain.
