Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi on Tuesday mocked the Centre and said the Narendra Modi-led government wanted to impose a ban on popular video game PUBG, but realised that this would lead to an increased demand for jobs.
“Modiji really wanted to ban PUBG but realised that if the youth do not have the distractions of the fantasy world, they will ask for real world things like jobs and that will be an issue,” Singhvi tweeted.
Singhvi’s remarks came a day after reportes said that the Indian government had banned 47 applications that are clones of the 59 Chinese apps that were blocked on June 29. The ban on the 47 apps was put in place late last week “on grounds of national security and privacy concerns”. The names of the banned clones are TikTok Lite, Helo Lite, SHAREit Lite, BIGO LIVE Lite and VFY Lite.
PUBG is a game developed by a South Korean company, but has major investments from the Chinese company Tencent, according to India Today. However, the video game is not among the apps that have already been banned in India
On June 29, India banned the apps citing threat to national security and sovereignty. The decision came after tensions on the border between New Delhi and Beijing rose, leading to the deaths of at least 20 Indian soldiers during a “violent face-off” with Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control. The June 29 order covered a variety of applications from e-commerce to gaming, social media, browsers, instant messaging and file sharing to target China in the online space. It includes mostly popular Chinese apps such as TikTok, WeChat, Cam Scanner.
On July 2, China had called India’s move to ban 59 Chinese-origin mobile apps a violation of World Trade Organization rules. China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Gao Feng had said that Beijing hopes New Delhi would correct its “discriminatory actions” against Chinese companies immediately.
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