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Officials in Indonesia and Sri Lanka battled Wednesday to reach survivors of deadly flooding in remote, cut-off regions as the toll in the disaster that hit four countries topped 1,500.In Indonesia, survivors expressed growing frustration about the slow pace of rescue efforts and aid delivery, as humanitarian groups warned the scale of the challenge was almost unprecedented, even in a country that has faced no shortage of natural disasters.Monsoon rains paired with two tropical storm systems dumped record deluges across Sri Lanka, and parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia last week.In Indonesia, 770 were confirmed dead, the country’s disaster management agency said on Wednesday, revising the toll down from 812 it announced earlier in the day. Another 463 people are also missing.  Information is only trickling in as many regions remain physically cut off by flood damage, isolated by electricity and communications failures, or both.”It’s very challenging logistically to respond,” said Ade Soekadis, executive director of aid group Mercy Corps Indonesia.”The extent of the damage and the size of the affected area is really huge.”The group is hoping to send hygiene equipment and water both from Jakarta and locally.He said reports of food and water shortages were already “very concerning” and the situation will be “more problematic as time goes by”.- ‘Like an earthquake’ -At an evacuation centre in Pandan, 52-year-old Reinaro Waruwu told AFP he was “disappointed” in the government’s immediate response and the slow arrival of aid.”Some waited a day and night before receiving help, so they couldn’t be saved,” he said, surrounded by evacuees sitting on mats on the floor in the hall-turned-shelter.”I am frustrated, it doesn’t need to be said twice,” he added.He described the floodwaters and landslides as unprecedented.”It came like an earthquake… I thought ‘Well, if I am going to die, then so be it,'” he said, beginning to sob heavily.Traumatised, he could not even eat on arrival, and food has only been patchily available, though vegetables arriving on Tuesday offered a “semblance of hope”, he said.Nearby, Hamida Telaumbaunua, 37, described watching her entire kitchen swept away by floodwaters.”My heart… this was the first time I experienced such a flood,” she said. Her home was lost entirely, along with everything but the few possessions she took when she left.”It’s hard to think about what lies ahead. Maybe as long as we’re still here, it’s okay, but later… I don’t know what will happen.”In North Aceh, 30-year-old M. Atar said some areas were only just becoming accessible as roads were cleared.”We are in dire need of clean water. Very much in need,” he said.The weather system that hit Indonesia also brought heavy rains to Thailand, killing at least 267 people, authorities said Wednesday, and Malaysia, where two people were killed.- Sri Lanka ‘open’ for tourists -Though floods are common in Asia during monsoon season, climate change is making heavy rain events more frequent because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.Warmer oceans can also turbocharge storm systems.A separate weather system, Cyclone Ditwah, brought torrential rain and deadly floods and landslides to much of Sri Lanka last week.At least 474 people were killed, and authorities have estimated the disaster’s cost at up to $7 billion.Another 356 people are unaccounted for, including in some of the hardest-hit regions that remain largely inaccessible.Officials said laws that allow a person to be declared dead only after being missing for six months could be shortened to expedite the issuance of death certificates.The government has said it will offer 25,000 rupees ($83) to families to help clean their homes. Those who lost homes will receive up to $8,000.On the outskirts of Colombo, R.M.V. Lalith was beginning the clean-up at his two-storey home.”We managed to salvage some furniture by moving it upstairs, but the kitchen is a mess,” he told AFP, as a relative helped push mud out of the living room.Despite the disaster, the tourism-reliant country welcomed a luxury cruiseliner to Colombo port on Tuesday, authorities said.The arrival sends “a clear message to the world: Sri Lanka is safe, open, and ready to embrace visitors once again”, the country’s tourist board said.burs-sah/ceg

Survivors of Cyclone Ditwah that has ravaged Sri Lanka in recent days began returning to their devastated homes on Wednesday, faced with a massive clean-up as they start rebuilding their lives.The powerful storm brought record rains that triggered landslides and floods across the island country, killing at least 474 people, according to disaster officials, with another 366 still unaccounted for.Soma Wanniarachchi, 69, had stayed behind as long as she could, “but when the water level reached about eight feet (2.5 metres), I decided to leave,” she told AFP.Back in her village of Kotuwila, near the capital Colombo, she was shocked to see the damage to her catering equipment rental business.Chafing dishes and woks have disappeared, and “my stainless steel utensils are now probably in the Indian Ocean,” she said.”At least three buffet sets have gone,” added the business owner, who has asked neighbours for help with the daunting clean-up.Inside the house, there was still about a foot of flood water.IT lecturer Sanjaya Tissara, 31, returned to his two-storey house in Angoda, on the eastern outskirts of Colombo, to find a muddy mess and oily sludge.”I had several electronic components for my computer business I operate when I am not teaching. Some of the equipment was saved because I had time to move it upstairs, but a lot was lost in the floods,” he told AFP.He said that when the Kelani River overflowed last week in the area of the capital, it was worse than a major flood in 2016 that killed 71 people.”We experienced a big flood in 2016, when the water levels here were about four feet, but this time it went to above six feet,” Tissara said.His neighbour, oil company executive R. M. V. Lalith, 51, has called on relatives to help clear layers of mud on everything that survived the floods.”It’s not possible to do this clean-up alone,” Lalith told AFP.”We managed to salvage some furniture by moving it upstairs, but the kitchen is a mess.”He said local volunteers had provided cooked food, which was distributed by boats, some operated by the security forces.The government said it was increasing clean-up assistance, giving each household 25,000 rupees ($83) due to the scale of the devastation.Following previous floods, the standard government allowance was 10,000 rupees.Prabath Chandrakeerthi, Sri Lanka’s commissioner general for essential services and the top official in charge of recovery, said authorities were also handing out up to 2.5 million rupees for rebuilding homes.”Our initial estimate is that we will need about six to seven billion dollars for the reconstruction,” Chandrakeerthi told reporters.Some of the worst-affected areas in the central hills, hit by deadly landslides, remain inaccessible, and authorities were working to clear roads and restore communications.

India’s rupee fell to a fresh record low of over 90 per dollar Wednesday, extending recent declines, with traders partly blaming the delay in striking a trade deal with the United States.The rupee is among Asia’s worst forex performers this year, pressured by India’s current account deficit and foreign outflows.New Delhi’s early trade negotiations with Washington sparked optimism that foreign capital would flow into the world’s fifth-largest economy — helping push the rupee to a nearly six-month-high of 83.75 against the dollar in May.But setbacks in trade talks and weak corporate earnings have caused overseas investors to offload well over $16 billion in Indian shares this year so far.On Wednesday morning, the rupee weakened as much as 0.35 percent to a symbolic new low of 90.19, according to Bloomberg data.Dilip Parmar, an analyst at HDFC Securities, told AFP the rupee’s fall was “first and foremost” an “imbalance of demand and supply” with foreign fund outflows and trade deal uncertainty adding fuel to the fire.But another key factor, Parmar added, was a lack of “big and impactful” intervention from India’s central bank.Analysts say the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has this year sporadically defended the rupee through aggressive dollar sales to support key levels, but also appears of late to be allowing greater currency flexibility.”Defending a specific level in the current macro backdrop would be costly and counterproductive,” Raj Gaikar, research analyst at SAMCO Securities, told AFP.”With inflation running well below earlier expectations, the policy priority has shifted toward supporting growth rather than expending reserves to hold an artificial line,” he said.The central bank was intervening only to ease volatility, not to reverse a trend driven by fundamentals, Gaikar added.He expects the rupee to settle in a “88-92 range”.”This more hands-off approach signals a transition to a market-aligned regime rather than a rigid defence of symbolic levels,” he said.

Sri Lankan authorities said Wednesday they would need some $7 billion to rebuild homes, industries and roads destroyed by Cyclone Ditwah, which has left at least 465 people dead so far.Hopes have faded for the 366 other people unaccounted for after mudslides and floods triggered by the cyclone, which brought record rains across the island last week.”Our initial estimate is that we will need about six to seven billion dollars for the reconstruction,” said Prabath Chandrakeerthi, the Commissioner-General of Essential Services who is leading the massive recovery effort.Chandrakeerthi added that the government was providing 25,000 rupees ($81) to each family to help clean their homes, while those who lost their homes would receive up to 2.5 million rupees ($8,100).President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said foreign assistance was essential to finance the recovery, as the country was still emerging from its worst ever economic crisis three years ago.Dissanayake declared a state of emergency on Saturday and has vowed to rebuild with international support.”We were just coming out of the economic crisis when we were hit by this disaster, which is the biggest challenge faced by any government,” Dissanayake told his top officials on Tuesday.Sri Lanka declared a sovereign default on its $46 billion external debt in April 2022 after the country ran out of foreign exchange to finance even the most essential imports, such as food, fuel and medicines.The country secured a $2.9 billion bailout loan from the IMF, which has said the economy has since stabilised, but Sri Lanka must maintain its reforms, including austerity measures.The crisis in 2022 led to months of street protests which forced then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down.Floodwaters in the capital Colombo were receding Wednesday after major flooding over the weekend.Over 1.5 million people in the country have been affected by the natural disaster, with some 200,000 in state-run shelters.Some of the worst-affected areas in the central hills remain inaccessible, and authorities were working to clear the roads and restore communication lines.Despite the disaster, the tourism-reliant country welcomed a luxury cruiseliner to Colombo port on Tuesday, authorities said.The arrival sends “a clear message to the world: Sri Lanka is safe, open, and ready to embrace visitors once again,” the country’s tourist board said.

In the mist-draped mountains of Sri Lanka’s tea country, rescuers were still plucking bodies from the reddish-brown mud on Tuesday after last week’s cyclone, the island’s worst natural disaster in decades.At least 465 people were killed, according to disaster officials, with another 366 missing.Sri Lanka’s Air Force has been combing the landslide-struck landscape, surveying the damage and ferrying food and other essential supplies to marooned residents.Though the rain has stopped, recovery has just begun.As the first journalist for foreign media to join a relief mission over the tea-growing region, AFP photographer Ishara Kodikara saw a swathe of the country destroyed after slips of soil flattened everything in their paths, including roads and the vehicles that were on them.The roof of some houses peaked through the mud, while the rest of the buildings were swallowed by the torrents of soil unleashed by Cyclone Ditwah.Jagged tears in the mountainsides revealed churned-up expanses of earth, with a few patches of the lush vegetation still clinging nearby in stark contrast. There was no sign of human life in the wrecked landscape.In the central Welimada area, now inaccessible to heavy vehicles, rescue workers pulled 11 bodies from the mud on Monday and appealed for help to search for dozens more.In some places, entire slopes have been sheared away, leaving ochre wounds slicing through the dense plantation greenery.- Swallowed by landslides -The full extent of the damage to tea plantations, factories and tea pickers is not yet clear, but local media reported the industry has been hard hit.What were once thick, unbroken canopies of tea are now wide channels of mud and debris.The main roadway has been swallowed by landslides, buried under heaps of mud, rock and uprooted vegetation. Only a few stray pieces of tarmac remain, suggesting where the road once was.The authorities say they have given top priority to reopening road access to the region, which is still supplied by air.Helicopters from neighbouring India and Pakistan have also been deployed to evacuate tourists and the sick.On the relief mission AFP attended on Tuesday, the VVIP Bell-412 aircraft had its seats removed to make room for food and other essential supplies.It ferried water and dry rations to stranded residents of Nuwara Eliya, in the heart of the tea country and 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Colombo.Rescuers expect the death toll to rise as they regain access to areas that had been cut off from electricity and telephones for days.The disaster is already the deadliest since the Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami of 2004, which devastated Sri Lanka’s coastline.This time, the entire country has been affected either by landslides or floods.President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared a state of emergency, and appealed for international assistance.

Governments and aid groups in Indonesia and Sri Lanka worked Tuesday to rush aid to hundreds of thousands stranded by deadly flooding that has killed more than 1,300 people in four countries.Torrential monsoon season deluges paired with two separate tropical cyclones last week dumped heavy rain across Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia.Climate change is producing more intense rain events because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and warmer oceans can turbocharge storms.AFP analysis of US weather data showed several flood-hit regions across Asia experienced their highest November rainfall totals since 2012.The floodwaters have now largely receded, but the devastation means hundreds of thousands of people are living in shelters and struggling to secure clean water and food.In Indonesia’s Aceh, one of the worst-affected regions, people told AFP that anyone who could afford to was stockpiling.”Road access is mostly cut off in flood-affected areas,” 29-year-old Erna Mardhiah said as she joined a long queue at a petrol station in Banda Aceh.”People are worried about running out of fuel,” she added from the line she had been waiting in for two hours.The pressure has affected prices.”Most things are already sky-high… chillies alone are up to 300,000 rupiah ($18) per kilo, so that’s probably why people are panic-buying,” she said.On Monday, Indonesia’s government said it was sending 34,000 tons of rice and 6.8 million litres of cooking oil to the three worst-affected provinces, Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra.”There can be no delays,” Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said.But Alfian, a resident in Banda Aceh, told AFP the government had been “very slow, especially in ensuring basic necessities”.- Food shortage risk -Even areas that were not directly affected were seeing shortages because of blocked transport links.In Dolok Sanggul in North Sumatra, one resident told AFP he had been lining up since Monday afternoon for fuel, and spent the night sleeping in his car.”When we were about to enter the gas station, the fuel ran out,” he said.Aid groups warned that local markets were running out of essential supplies and prices had tripled.”Communities across Aceh are at severe risk of food shortages and hunger if supply lines are not reestablished in the next seven days,” said charity group Islamic Relief, which has sent a shipment of 12 tonnes of food aboard an Indonesian navy vessel.By Tuesday afternoon, the toll across Sumatra had risen to 712, but the number of missing was also rising, with 500 people still listed.And 1.2 million people have been forced from their homes, the disaster agency said.Survivors have described terrifying waves of water that arrived without warning.In East Aceh, Zamzami said the floodwaters had been “unstoppable, like a tsunami wave”.”We can’t explain how big the water seemed, it was truly extraordinary,” said the 33-year-old, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.The weather system that inundated Indonesia also brought heavy rain to southern Thailand, where at least 176 people were killed.Across the border in Malaysia, two more people were killed.- Colombo floodwaters recede -A separate storm brought heavy rains across all of Sri Lanka, triggering flash floods and deadly landslides that killed at least 465 people.Another 366 remain missing, and an official in the central town of Welimada told local reporters he expected the toll to rise, as his staff dug through the mud looking for victims buried by landslides.President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared a state of emergency to deal with what he called the “most challenging natural disaster in our history”.Unlike his Indonesian counterpart, he has called for international aid.Sri Lanka’s air force, backed by counterparts from India and Pakistan, has been evacuating stranded residents and delivering food and other supplies.Some 1.7 million people were affected by the floods and landslides, officials said.In the capital Colombo, floodwaters were slowly subsiding on Tuesday. Rains have eased across the country, but landslide alerts remain in force across most of the hardest-hit central region, officials said.burs-sah/aj/ami

A man convicted of murder was publicly executed at a stadium in eastern Afghanistan, witnesses told AFP on Tuesday, a punishment a UN rights monitor called “inhumane”.The man is the 12th person publicly executed since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, according to an AFP tally.The man, identified as Mangal, was executed in front of a crowd in Khost, the Supreme Court said in a statement.Witnesses told AFP the man was shot three times by a relative of the victim, in a scene witnessed by thousands of people. He had been sentenced to “retaliatory punishment” for killing a man after his case was “examined very precisely and repeatedly”, the court said.”The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace, but they refused,” it said.These executions could “prove to be positive” because “no one will dare to kill anyone in the future”, said Mujib Rahman Rahmani, a Khost resident at the stadium.Authorities had urged people to attend the execution in official notices shared widely on Monday.They said he was one of several attackers who opened fire on a house in January 2025, killing 10 people, including three women.The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said Tuesday before the public execution that such acts were “inhumane, cruel, and an unusual punishment, contrary to international law.””They must stop,” he wrote on social media.- International outcry -Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out in sports stadiums.The previous execution — the 11th according to AFP’s tally — took place in October, when a man was put to death in Badghis in front of thousands of spectators, including Taliban officials.Before that, four men were put to death in three different provinces on the same day in April.Taliban authorities also continue to employ corporal punishment, mainly flogging, for offences including theft, adultery and alcohol consumption.All execution orders are signed by the Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who lives in the movement’s heartland of Kandahar.Law and order are central to the Taliban’s ideology, which emerged from the chaos of a civil war following the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989.Rights groups such as Amnesty International have also denounced the Taliban government’s use of corporal and capital punishment.In its annual report published in April, Amnesty said Afghanistan was among the countries where death sentences were imposed after trials that “did not meet international fair trial standards”.

Governments and aid groups in Indonesia and Sri Lanka worked Tuesday to rush aid to hundreds of thousands stranded by deadly flooding that has killed 1,300 people in four countries.Torrential monsoon season deluges paired with two separate tropical cyclones last week dumped heavy rain across Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia.Climate change is producing more intense rain events because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and warmer oceans can turbocharge storms.AFP analysis of US weather data showed several flood-hit regions across Asia experienced their highest November rainfall totals since 2012.The floodwaters have now largely receded, but the devastation means hundreds of thousands of people are living in shelters and struggling to secure clean water and food.In Indonesia’s Aceh, one of the worst-affected regions, people told AFP that anyone who could afford to was stockpiling.”Road access is mostly cut off in flood-affected areas,” 29-year-old Erna Mardhiah said as she joined a long queue at a petrol station in Banda Aceh.”People are worried about running out of fuel,” she added from the line she had been waiting in for two hours.The pressure has affected prices.”Most things are already sky-high… chillies alone are up to 300,000 rupiah per kilo ($18), so that’s probably why people are panic-buying,” she said.On Monday, Indonesia’s government said it was sending 34,000 tons of rice and 6.8 million litres of cooking oil to the three worst-affected provinces, Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra.”There can be no delays,” Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said.But Alfian, a resident in Banda Aceh, told AFP the government had been “very slow, especially in ensuring basic necessities”.- Food shortage risk -Even areas that were not directly affected were seeing shortages because of blocked transport links.In Dolok Sanggul in North Sumatra, one resident told AFP he had been lining up since Monday afternoon for fuel, and spent the night sleeping in his car.”When we were about to enter the gas station, the fuel ran out,” he said.Aid groups warned that local markets were running out of essential supplies and prices had tripled.”Communities across Aceh are at severe risk of food shortages and hunger if supply lines are not reestablished in the next seven days,” charity group Islamic Relief said.A shipment of 12 tonnes of food from the group aboard an Indonesian navy vessel was due to arrive in Aceh on Tuesday.By Tuesday afternoon, the toll across Sumatra had risen to 712, but the number of missing was also rising, with 500 people still listed.And 1.2 million people have been forced from their homes, the disaster agency added.Survivors have described terrifying waves of water that arrived without warning.In East Aceh, Zamzami said the floodwaters had been “unstoppable, like a tsunami wave”.”We can’t explain how big the water seemed, it was truly extraordinary,” said the 33-year-old, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.The weather system that inundated Indonesia also brought heavy rain to southern Thailand, where at least 176 people were killed.Across the border in Malaysia, two more people were killed.- Colombo floodwaters recede -A separate storm brought heavy rains across all of Sri Lanka, triggering flash floods and deadly landslides that killed at least 410 people.Another 336 remain missing, and an official in the central town of Welimada told local reporters he expected the toll to rise, as his staff dug through the mud looking for victims buried by landslides.President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared a state of emergency to deal with what he called the “most challenging natural disaster in our history”.Unlike his Indonesian counterpart, he has called for international aid.Sri Lanka’s air force, backed by counterparts from India and Pakistan, has been evacuating stranded residents and delivering food and other supplies.In the capital Colombo meanwhile, floodwaters were slowly subsiding on Tuesday.The speed with which water rose around the city surprised local residents used to seasonal flooding.”Every year we experience minor floods, but this is something else,” delivery driver Dinusha Sanjaya told AFP.Rains have eased across the country, but landslide alerts remain in force across most of the hardest-hit central region, officials said.burs-sah/lb/fox

Governments and aid groups in Indonesia and Sri Lanka worked Tuesday to rush aid to hundreds of thousands stranded by deadly flooding that has killed over 1,200 people in four countries.Torrential monsoon season deluges paired with two separate tropical cyclones last week dumped heavy rain across Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia.Climate change is producing more intense rain events because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and warmer oceans can turbocharge storms.The floodwaters have now largely receded, but the devastation means hundreds of thousands of people are living in shelters and struggling to secure clean water and food.In Indonesia’s Aceh, one of the worst-affected regions, residents told AFP that survivors who could afford to were stockpiling supplies.”Road access is mostly cut off in flood-affected areas,” 29-year-old Erna Mardhiah said as she joined a long queue at a petrol station in Banda Aceh.”People are worried about running out of fuel,” she added from the line she had been in for two hours.The pressure has caused skyrocketing prices.”Most things are already sky-high… chillies alone are up to 300,000 rupiah per kilo ($18), so that’s probably why people are panic-buying,” she said.On Monday, Indonesia’s government said it was sending 34,000 tons of rice and 6.8 million litres of cooking oil to the three worst-affected provinces, Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra.”There can be no delays,” Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said.But Alfian, a resident in Banda Aceh, told AFP the government had been “very slow, especially in ensuring basic necessities”.- Food shortage risk -Aid groups said they were working to ship supplies to affected areas, warning that local markets were running out of essential supplies and prices had tripled already.”Communities across Aceh are at severe risk of food shortages and hunger if supply lines are not reestablished in the next seven days,” charity group Islamic Relief said.A shipment of 12 tonnes of food from the group aboard an Indonesian navy vessel was due to arrive in Aceh on Tuesday.At least 659 people were killed in the floods across Sumatra, and 475 are still listed as missing. A million people have evacuated from their homes, according to the disaster agency.Survivors have described terrifying waves of water that arrived without warning.In East Aceh, Zamzami said the floodwaters had been “unstoppable, like a tsunami wave”.”We can’t explain how big the water seemed, it was truly extraordinary,” said the 33-year-old, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.People in his village sheltered atop a local two-storey fish market to escape the deluge and were now trying to clean the mud and debris left behind while battling power and telecommunications outages.”It’s difficult for us (to get) clean water,” he told AFP on Monday.”There are children who are starting to get fevers, and there’s no medicine.”The weather system that inundated Indonesia also brought heavy rain to southern Thailand, where at least 176 people were killed.Across the border in Malaysia, two more people were killed.- Colombo floodwaters recede -A separate storm brought heavy rains across all of Sri Lanka, triggering flash floods and deadly landslides that killed at least 410 people.Another 336 remain missing, and an official in the central town of Welimada told local reporters he expected the toll to rise, as his staff dug through the mud looking for victims buried by landslides.President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared a state of emergency to deal with what he called the “most challenging natural disaster in our history”.Unlike his Indonesian counterpart, he has called for international aid.Sri Lanka’s air force, backed by counterparts from India and Pakistan, has been evacuating stranded residents and delivering food and other supplies.In the capital Colombo meanwhile, floodwaters were slowly subsiding on Tuesday.The speed with which waters rose around the city surprised local residents used to seasonal flooding.”Every year we experience minor floods, but this is something else,” delivery driver Dinusha Sanjaya told AFP.Rains have eased across the country, but landslide alerts remain in force across most of the hardest-hit central region, officials said.burs-sah/fox

India has ordered smartphone makers to pre-install a government-run cyber security app that cannot be removed, a move that has raised concerns about users’ privacy.The country has a massive 1.16 billion mobile phone users, according to government data from 2024, and authorities say the app will better protect them from fraud.Late on Monday, New Delhi gave manufacturers 90 days to comply with new rules saying the app “Sanchar Saathi” — meaning communication partner in Hindi — must be “pre-installed on all mobile handsets manufactured or imported for use in India”.The order, detailed in a press release, also asked phone makers to ensure the app was “readily visible and accessible to the end users at the time of first use or device setup and that its functionalities are not disabled or restricted”.The government said the app was designed to allow users to block and track lost or stolen phones.It also lets them identify and disconnect fake mobile subscriptions made in their name, among other functions.Government figures show the app has already helped trace more than 2.6 million phones. However, rights advocates and politicians have sounded the alarm over potentially serious consequences.Advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said Tuesday it was concerned about the new directive.The order “represents a sharp and deeply worrying expansion of executive control over personal digital devices”, it said in a statement on X.”The state is asking every smartphone user in India to accept an open ended, updatable surveillance capability on their primary personal device, and to do so without the basic guardrails that a constitutional democracy should insist on,” the IFF said.For devices that have already been manufactured and exist in the market across the country, the government mandated that “the manufacturer and importers of mobile handsets shall make an endeavour to push the App through software updates.”Cyber security analyst Nikhil Pahwa said the rules were “clearly” an invasion of privacy. “How do we know this app isn’t used to access files and messaging on our device, which is unencrypted on device? Or a future update won’t do that?” he said on X.”This is clearly an invasion of our privacy,” he added.Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opponents in the Congress party demanded an immediate rollback of the order, calling the move unconstitutional.”Big Brother cannot watch us,” Congress politician KC Venugopal said on X.”A pre-loaded government app that cannot be uninstalled is a dystopian tool to monitor every Indian,” he added.”It is a means to watch over every movement, interaction and decision of each citizen.” In August, Russia issued a similar directive ordering manufacturers to include a new messaging platform called Max on all new phones and tablets, but rights advocates warned the app could be used as a powerful surveillance tool.