The National Informatics Centre, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) recently launched version 2.0 of the Government of India’s instant messaging platform, Sandes. The platform hosts several features along with being encrypted and secure. Here is everything one should know about the messaging platform.
Sandes, the instant messaging platform
The platform was first released in August 2020. Sandes has been developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The application runs on Android, iOS, and web browsers. Sandes App, WhatsApp’s Indian Alternative, Now Available on iOS; Here’s How to Download and Setup.
Features of the platform
Sandes, an instant messaging application hosts several features such as providing ‘backup to chats’, ‘blue ticks’, ‘video, and audio call’ facility, to name a few. It also allows Gimoji for communication, which are special stickers or images. Moreover, pdf documents sent or received on Sandes can directly be uploaded on the Digilocker.
Organisation verified users
On Sandes, users are verified to ensure genuineness in the accounts created. Organisation verified users are those government users who have been verified by their respective organisations.
A Government user can access all the features on Sandes such as group chats, audio/video calls, etc, only if they have been verified by their organisation’s admin or invited to Sandes platform by an organisation verified user.
However, only a Nodal officer or the admin of a respective organisation can verify a user belonging to their organisation.
Users on Sandes
There are majorly two types of users on the platform – verified users and public users.
Verified users are government users whose occupation details have been verified by their respective organisation admin and have a tick symbol visible on their profile. On the other hand, public users are either citizens or government users who have not been verified. The tick symbol is used to indicate whether or not a user is verified.
Encryption and security
Individual chat messages and group chat messages are end-to-end encrypted on Sandes. Furthermore, a user can use a ‘confidential tag’ if the user wants to differentiate between messages to show that the message is confidential, in both individual and group chat. Similarly, a ‘priority tag’ can be used on messages to show the recipient that the message is to be considered on a priority basis, in both, individual and group chats.
Sandes, the government instant messaging system offers a scope of India’s alternative to instant messaging platforms in the country.
(The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Jun 10, 2021 05:16 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).
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