Paramilitary forces to switch to ‘Sandes App’ for official communication, document sharing

New Delhi [India], December 28 (ANI): Para-Military forces will completely switch to ‘Sandes App’ for all official communication and sharing of documents from the first week of January.

A senior official, who is aware of the development informed that all paramilitary forces have been suggested to switch to ‘Sandes App’ for all kinds of official communication and sharing of documents.

“For quick and fast communication, WhatsApp was very popular among security forces for internal communication, but in the present scenario where the safety of data is paramount and document sharing on messaging apps is a regular affair. To overcome security issues, it has been decided to switch to the ‘Sandes app’ that has been designed and developed in India,” said the officer.

In an internal communication, personnel have been suggested to download the new messaging app and get familiar with its features in a week as all communication will be switched to this new app from WhatsApp and other such messaging apps.

Another officer said that in the trial run, several glitches have been rectified, and the updated version of the App is ready to use.

“We have suggested CISF, CRPF, SSB, and ITBP to switch to the new app for all kinds of official communication and sharing of documents. The app doesn’t share data with third parties, and data safety is one of its key features,” the officer said.

The mobile application, developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), was launched in March 2021. It has since received significant updates, making the platform secure. The app is available on Android, and iOS and also has a desktop version.

It has been downloaded on more than ten lakh devices.

‘Sandes’ application is an open source-based indigenous instant messaging platform developed by NIC, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India to facilitate instant messaging communication in Government organisations.

It is hosted exclusively at Government infrastructure. It supports end-to-end encrypted messaging encrypted backup and encrypted OTP service.

Its privacy and data policy is governed by the rules and regulations of the Government of India. Sandes can be integrated with other Government communications systems for sending encrypted messages without any cost.

Currently, Sandes is integrated with NIC email, DigiLocker and e-office. At present, full features of the Sandes app are available only to government-verified users.

Employees of Government organisations need to contact the Nodal officer of their Ministry/ Department for verification.