According to the Economic Times, the plan is to develop a chat application that works same way WhatsApp and other Indian secure communication networks for government agencies, and as well protect them from any form of vulnerabilities from geopolitical developments.
"There are strong discussions that for strategic and security reasons, over a period of time, we should have email, messaging...all sorts of system, at least for government communication, which doesn't depend on outside players," an Indian government said. "We need to make communication insular."
The Indian government official said that there were ongoing discussions that to ensure that any sort of formal communications and data transmission must happen over secure networks and also be 100% stored in India.
Shortly after the US placed a ban that restricts Huawei from dealing with US tech companies, the US also urged Canada, the UK, Australia and horde of other countries to follow its footsteps in banning the Chinese tech maker. India has also been under pressure from the US government to ban Huawei's 5G as well.
"Look at what happened to Huawei, their Honor (branded) phones," the official said. "It was unthinkable, but now it has definitely rung alarm bells with us. Tomorrow, if the US finds us unreliable for some reason, all they need to do is ask their companies to slow down our networks in India and everything here will come to a standstill. We are vulnerable and must take steps to cover that."
Last year, France said it was developing its own messaging application which wasn't encrypted by the US or Russia so as to avoid incidents that might lead to the leak of government sensitive materials in the events of data breaches.