Confederation of All India Traders Wants Battlegrounds Mobile India to be Banned
BGMI continues to face a lot of friction before its official relaunch.
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Krafton released the Early Access version of Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) through the Google Play Store today on June 17. A few hours after the release of BGMI's open beta version, the Secretary General of CAIT (Confederation of All Indian Traders) - Praveen Khandelwal reached out to both Ravi Shankar Prasad (Minister of Law and Justice of India) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) via Twitter, urging them to immediately ban Battlegrounds Mobile India on behalf of CAIT, as he claimed that the mobile game was a threat to security of India.
BGMI Continues to Face Friction Even After Open Beta Release
MeitY a few days back clarified via an RTI filed by Dr Gaurav Tyagi (an Assistant Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University), that they have "no role in granting any permission for entry of PUBG or any company/Mobile App in India."
Another RTI filed to Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) carried a similar response with the Ministry stating that,
MHA does not grant permission for launching any app. MeitY issues blocking direction for any mobile applications under the provisions of section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, security of state and defence of India.MHA - Response to an RTI
This basically means that neither MHA nor MeitY have the power or authority to stop any application from launching in India. However, MeitY does have the right to block or ban any app (after its launch) in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India as per the law. This was the case when PUBG Mobile was initially banned in September 2020.
On 2 June 2021, Arvind Dharmapuri who is a Member of Parliament (MP) from Nizamabad, Telangana, had reportedly written a letter to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Electronics & Information Technology, requesting him to look into the matter.
Ashok Nete (MP from Maharashtra) had also raised concerns about user privacy and data theft by Krafton and Tencent. He also demanded “strict action against (the) Chinese company” in his Tweet.
Previously, Ninong Ering who is a Member of the Legislative Assembly, Arunachal Pradesh had also called for a ban on Battlegrounds Mobile India, calling it a “Chinese deception”. This had led to the hashtag ‘#BanBattlegroundsPUBG’ trending on Twitter India with several users requesting the Indian Government to ban Battlegrounds Mobile India’s relaunch.
