With the Union home ministry threatening to ban BlackBerry services if Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of the smartphone, fails to provide a solution to India’s security-related concerns by August 31, high-profile ministers and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi are likely to be among the losers.
Ten Union ministers use BlackBerry while a dozen others depend on their private secretaries to keep them posted with global developments through the RIM service.
Canada has told the government that banning BlackBerry is not the solution since security concerns have been expressed about other services too.
Ministers who use the service are eagerly waiting for the government decision. It is learnt that human resources development minister Kapil Sibal even composes poems on his BlackBerry. Prithviraj Chavan, a minister in the prime minister’s office, declined to comment saying, “Where was the time to think of all this? We were busy with the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill.”
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and defence minister AK Antony are also among those who do a lot of their work on the phone, but it’s their staff which executes it on the device, a source said.
Home minister P Chidambaram and communications minister A Raja, both central to the issue, don’t use a BlackBerry phone. Chidambaram recently said he could not comment on the BlackBerry ban since he did not know how to use it.
A source told DNA that while top business honchos are hooked
on to BlackBerry, it’s not the same within the government. Unlike US president Barack Obama, who is very attached to his BlackBerry, senior ministers here are still not used to it. The government has set August 31 as the deadline for RIM for allowing lawful interception of encrypted data flowing through the smartphone device.
