New Delhi,
The Congress-BJP duel over data leaks has escalated with AICC president Rahul Gandhi on Monday describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi “the big boss who likes to spy on Indians” and the BJP calling him “technologically illiterate”.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi, alleging breach of privacy by the Modi government, asked why the PM’s personal application — NaMo — asked for 25 personal data points, if not for the purpose of “spying on people’s private lives”. The Congress also alleged that while an official government application asked for only 12 personal feature points, the NaMo application asked for many more.

Rahul Gandhi tweeted: “Modi misusing PM position to build personal database with data on millions of Indians via the NaMo app promoted by the Government. If as PM he wants to use tech to communicate with India, no problem. But use the official PMO APP for it. This data belongs to India, not Modi.”

Moments later, Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani questioned Gandhi’s “IQ”, comparing him with ‘Chhota Bheem’, a cartoon character.

“Even ‘Chhota Bheem’ knows that commonly asked permission on apps don’t tantamount to snooping… Now that we’re talking tech, would you care to answer @RahulGandhiji why Congress sends data to Singapore servers which can be accessed by any Tom, Dick and Analytica?” she asked.

“It is obvious that a narrative-less Congress is worried over the direct communication between the PM and people,” claimed BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra, adding it was time Rahul Gandhi “grew up”.

Countering BJP’s accusations that it was the Congress that had indulged in data leak which was why it had offloaded its official application from Google Play Store, Singhvi explained: “The Congress does not indulge in data breach. That is BJP’s domain. While NaMo application has 50 lakh downloads, our application had only 15,000. It was brought down as it was not found to be viable,” Singhvi said.

Asking why the PM’s application needed phone numbers and emails of NCC cadets, he recalled past instances when debit card/credit card data had been compromised.