Telangana to continue with WhatsApp for now

Hyderabad: With the WhatsApp extending its deadline on privacy policy agreement with users till May 15, one of the big users of the famous app, the Telangana State government, has deferred its decision to change to other apps. From Chief Minister's Office (CMO) to village panchayats, the government has been using WhatsApp for official commu­nication and also sharing the documents for quick redressal of the issues at different levels.

Following the earlier decision of WhatsApp to amend its privacy policy, the State government has contemplated shifting to Signal and Telegram apps. It had started creating groups on these apps and in some cases, even official communication had been started. With the decision of WhatsApp to postpone implementation of its new privacy policy till May, State Ministers, legislators, departments secretaries and district authorities resumed their operations on WhatsApp, a senior official said.

Though there is no official policy decision taken by the government on the use of WhatsApp for official purposes, the government had adopted the popular app as the mode of communication between the government departments, officials and legislators. The key departments like Police, Industry, IT, Education and Health officials were paying service charge for using it for official purposes.

Up to 250 member WhatsApp groups are permitted to operate free of cost. The app group with over 250 members has to pay service tax every month. More than 50 official groups above 250 members were in the operation. Officials said that since there was no threat of leakage of information from WhatsApp which provides safety and security with end-to-end encryption for the present, the departments were continuing with the use of the old app.

All the official app groups are being maintained by either department secretaries or heads of departments. Public Relation Officers were running the Ministers official app group for sharing news-related information with the media and press. Collectors and other top officials are the group admins in the district headquarters.