Union Minister for Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia claimed on Tuesday that the Sanchar Saathi app, a fraud reporting app the government wants pre-installed on all devices, will be optional and can be deleted by users.

“… If you don’t want Sanchar Saathi, you can delete it. It is optional… It is our duty to introduce this app to everyone. Keeping it in their devices or not is up to the user,” he said to reporters.

So it sounds like it can be removed, though I can’t help but feel like it might leave malicious artifacts (this is based on absolutely no evidence and is purely speculation on my part)