The emergency blocking of lending apps LazyPay and Kissht may have been done inadvertently, a government official told The Hindu.
The websites for LazyPay and Kissht were blocked following an emergency order issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology targeting over 200 gambling and lending apps, most of which appeared to be operated from China. The order was the result of a request from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The two apps were available on the Google Play marketplace for Android smartphones as on Wednesday evening. “There can be an editorial error [following] complaints against similar sounding apps,” the official said. “That error happens unintentionally. When such [emergency] orders are issued, a meeting is convened” by a review committee, the official said. Such a committee would have been due to meet on Tuesday or Wednesday.
National security issues
The official said that if the two apps were blocked erroneously, “there is a solution also in case something goes wrong.” LazyPay has insisted that it is an Indian company with no Chinese links, and said that it was working to resolve the issue. LazyPay and Kissht’s parent firms both said they were working to resolve the issue.
Apps from China have been banned on national security grounds over the past three years, even as the government seeks to crack down on the usurious lending and illegal betting enabled by some of these platforms. In a list of 59 apps, mostly from China, publicised by the government last year, it said that they were blocked to safeguard the “safety and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace”.
