Sanchar Saathi - a safety app or a surveillance trap ?

[pawanjain]

By now you would have already heard in news that the Indian government has set a mandate to mobile phone companies to pre-install the Sanchar Saathi app on new mobile phones.
The government claims that it will be a safety app and will help users in tracking, blocking and finding lost and stolen phones.
The app has already been launched in playstore in January and has helped recover more than 7 lakh phones till date.
It will be pre-installed on new phones going forward and installed on existing phones via new software updates.

On the hindsight, users will not be able to disable the app and besides that the app will have permission to camera, mic, location etc... by default and there won't be anything we can do about it.
So is it really a safety app or is the government doing so for surveillance ? Leading brands like Apple and Samsung are pushing back due to privacy, compliance and security reasons though.

Source: India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app

Update:
On the latest update today, the government has removed the mandate seeing a drastic surge in app downloads citing the acceptance of the app already.
But do you really think they will keep it this way or might soon bring in the mandate again and force the users to install this app.

Source: Government withdraws mandatory Sanchar Saathi pre-installation on phones after backlash

[LucyFurr]

I think our government is trying to replicate what China has been doing for decades with their people. But our government is capable of tracking 1.4 billion people?

The officers are not even checking the documents properly but now they are dreaming to keep everyone under the surveillance, I doubt it is not possible without the help from private tech companies that will again steal all the data and use them to make money.