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Two weeks after residents of Noida, Greater Noida and civil society submitted a legal challenge against the mandatory imposition of Aarogya Setu app, the Gautam Buddh Nagar District administration has rolled back its orders for the contact tracing app.
This comes in stark contrast to its previous order on 3 May which directed that the app is mandatory and non-installation of the Aarogya Setu app will be treated as a violation of the order and attract criminal penalties.
On 5 May, residents of Gautam Buddh Nagar district, which includes Noida, Greater Noida and Dadri, led by advocate Ritwik Shrivastav , submitted a representation to Additional Deputy Commissioner (Law & Order), Ashutosh Dwivedi, challenging the legal basis for making installation of Aarogya Setu mandatory.
Speaking with The Quint, Shrivastav described the latest order as “a considerable rollback.”
This drastic scale down of the district’s order flows from the latest guidelines issued by the Union Home Ministry (MHA) on 17 May.
While its 1 May guidelines announcing lockdown 3.0 had ordered “100 percent coverage” of Aarogya Setu in all containment zones and had made it mandatory for all public and private sector workers, its subsequent guidelines on 17 May scaled down the requirement to install the app on a “best effort basis”.
The MHA guidelines issued on 17 May state, “With a view to ensuring safety in offices and workspaces, employees on best effort basis should ensure that Aarogya Setu is installed by employees having compatible mobile phones.”
And Gautam Buddh Nagar district’s orders on 20 May made no mention of the app at all.
Pointing towards the nature of the scale back that has flown from the latest MHA guidelines to the state of Uttar Pradesh and subsequently to the district, Apar Gupta, executive director at Internet Freedom Foundation told The Quint, “MHA’s ‘best effort basis’ still requires a person to take active steps up to their ability to have Aarogya Setu installed but the term ‘encouraged’ as used by the UP government does not require one to take any active steps.”
The mandatory installation of the app “amounts to a case of executive overreach by the district administration and violation of privacy safeguards. What we have asked is simple, to modify its order and make the installation of the app voluntary,” advocate Ritwick Shrivastav had told The Quint on 13 May.
“If there is no 144 orders now, our writ petition is infructuous,” said advocate Ritwick Shrivastav. He, however, added that it is important to know how many, if any, persons were booked for not having Aarogya Setu installed. If an FIR has been filed against an individual, it would still stand despite the latest roll back.
On 13 May, after a group of Noida and Greater Noida residents submitted a letter before the district magistrate and police commissioner challenging the order of making Aarogya Setu App mandatory, the district police had told The Quint it was in the process of seeking legal advice on the issue.
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